No Way Out
Welcome to the No Way Out podcast where we examine the variety of domains and disciplines behind John R. Boyd’s OODA sketch and why, today, more than ever, it is an imperative to understand Boyd’s axiomatic sketch of how organisms, individuals, teams, corporations, and governments comprehend, shape, and adapt in our VUCA world.
No Way Out
From Empire to Einheit: Hegseth’s Reform Challenge with Don Vandergriff
In this eye-opening conversation with military reform expert Don Vandergriff, we dive deep into one of the most pressing yet overlooked issues facing America's armed forces: the bloated officer corps that's undermining our combat effectiveness. Vandergriff, nicknamed "the Sun Tzu of the American Army" by Chinese military analysts, brings decades of research and hard data to explain how we've created a top-heavy military bureaucracy that values paperwork over warfighting.
The discussion reveals startling statistics - nearly one in five military personnel is now an officer, with field-grade to junior officer ratios approaching 1:1. This stands in stark contrast to history's most effective fighting forces, which maintained officer percentages between 2.5-5%. Vandergriff traces this problem to the post-WWII "up or out" promotion system that prioritizes career progression over combat readiness and has fostered a culture focused inward on bureaucratic processes rather than outward on battlefield effectiveness.
We explore fascinating historical examples from the Prussian-German military system, Israeli Defense Forces, and even submarine warfare during WWII to understand how high-trust, cohesive units with empowered junior leaders consistently outperform bloated hierarchies. The conversation doesn't just diagnose problems but offers concrete solutions, including unit manning systems that build trust through continuity, reformed professional military education that develops independent thinkers, and leadership approaches that value moral courage over checkbox compliance.
Whether you're a military professional, a business leader, or simply interested in organizational effectiveness, this discussion provides valuable insights into how institutions can build cultures of trust, adaptability, and mission focus. The principles that create effective fighting forces translate directly to any organization facing complex challenges in rapidly changing environments. Share your thoughts with us - how can these military lessons apply to your organization or leadership approach?
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March 25, 2025
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Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch:
You commented on it. To me it was horrible.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, it's always this misunderstanding and this is what Ponch and I are talking about, people all the time. Ooda loop sketch is fractal, orientation is fractal, it goes from one person to a Marine Corps and everything in between. It's not enough. I got to have it so it fixes and it goes into my bureaucratic dispos and, like, my bureaucratic tendencies aren't acknowledged by OODA loop or whatever. And there's a reason for that because you misunderstand that, that there is the mismatch that if somebody understands they're going to roll you. I know that you read my article today about like understanding the difference between having an empire and having an insurgency.
Don Vandergriff :It was so good, goddamn good man. I mean all of them are good. I was telling Ponch before you come on. I look forward to them because I honestly learn something every time in a good way. You guys are doing great work.
Mark McGrath:Here's what I expect. I'm going to get some people that are going to like you, they're going to actually read it and understand it and look at the concepts. But I'm going to have some other people that are going to say, well, I'm a, I'm a Democrat, I you know John F Kennedy, he's too conservative now. Or like I'ma, I'm a liberal and he wasn't liberal enough. Or they're going to say like he was a womanizer and they're going to completely miss the substance of what I'm actually talking about, which is a reality. It's well documented is that he understood insurgency very well.
Don Vandergriff :He really did. He tried to do the right thing by establishing the Green Berets and the other things that you mentioned. But I just love the whole historical, the way both you guys take something from history and make it a modern learning point. That's a great art.
Mark McGrath:Well, and I'll tell you and we'll share it here on the show If you had the paid version, you go down and you read about the practical app stuff. I actually started talking about Victor Krulak, who, Robert Corum, in addition to Boyd, did a biography of Brute Krulak. I think that Boyd could never have had an influence on the Marine Corps if not for Victor Krulak, and Victor Krulak was John F Kennedy's insurgency advisor. He's the one we had Bing West on.
Mark McGrath:Krulak was behind all of that about CAP and counterinsurgency and everything like that, and you know exactly why and there's that picture of him speaking to LBJ and LBJ tosses his ass out of the office is that Krulak understood how to win, and it's the same concepts that we teach companies. These are the same concepts we're trying to teach you that with small, effective teams that are focused on mission, that understand Hulu sketch, you're going to get outsized outcomes versus someone that's just going to operate on bureaucracy, or what we always learned, or I learned this at Harvard blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Speaking about teams, let's get nasty today there, don, and take a look at officer bloat and all the things that are right or wrong about the current military structure. Don, great to have you here today.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:We're already recording just so you guys know you wrote several great articles in the past, several books, on the situation inside the five-sided funhouse up in DC at Pentagon and what's going on around globally. But just give us your take on where we are at the moment with the transition to Secretary of Defense Hegseth and the work ahead of him for really reducing the fat if there is any inside the military. So your thoughts on that Don?
Don Vandergriff :I think he started off very well. I don't I've only met him a couple of times shortly, but I mutual friends. But I think he's the right guy. He's out right now trying to regain trust which, as you guys know, if you don't have trust in an organization, you don't have an organization. So I think he's doing a fabulous job.
Don Vandergriff :I'm not seeking a job with him. I have sent him my books. I told him and the new secretary of the Army that I just want to help. Okay, so I'll start off with that preface. They have a huge undertaking.
Don Vandergriff :What the military continues to do is it's a self-licking ice cream cone in that, the system that creates the senior leaders. It's very hard for them to turn around and say, hey, this system's messed up, because it would say I'm messed up. So I reposted an article by an Air Force lieutenant colonel on the on the colonels, about the colonels and it's it's it's extremely hard. I mean it's just culturally. You have very few exceptions that will do that and their responses like they were to me when I was very popular I don't think that's the right word, but my work was being highlighted two decades ago, 2002 through 2005, with Washington Post articles, cover of the Army Times briefings to 163 VIPs from congressmen, generals, sess, throughout the DC area was. The response was like you guys meet half and half. You had a great man, this guy's got the moral courage. His work's great.
Don Vandergriff :I got awards for it, by the way. So that's validated All your sour grapes and what you're advocating. I had, I actually had people in the Pentagon I ran into when I'd go over there to brief. That would say what you're doing to us. You're ruining my chances for promotion. If you, if they approve. They actually thought I had a Colonel sit me down and I respect, respectfully, listen to him. But it's all about me, me, me, you know so that's all about me, me, me.
Don Vandergriff :That's a reflection of the society versus what's happening with Doge, for example. Right now I've sent Doge, my officer bloat study, and I got an acknowledgement. They got it Okay. With the same note to Elon and his team I'm not seeking it. They wanted me to go on the page and apply and all that I said. I'm not seeking a job, I'm comfortable, I'm being able to take care of my wife, so that's not the issue with me. It never has been. I walked the walk. So the job that Pete Hegseth I think he said it in polling a few weeks ago. He says we're looking to hire and bring on people on the team to help me reform. That's paraphrasing it in the spring.
Don Vandergriff :So what I'm hoping happens, like I said, mutual contacts have reached out to him. He's got my book Adopting Mission Command. I didn't want to overwhelm him with too many books, like I did Vice President JD Vance when I sent him five of them five of them, but again with a note. I said I'm a patriot, I'm an award-winning author, award-winning teacher. I just want to help because the country's done a lot for me, especially the last four or five years. So with that as a preface, what I would start out with and I've talked to some good friends that you guys may know, like Colonel Bill Connor, who's on Newsmax a lot. We've been friends since he was a captain, great guy, a practicing lawyer and reserve colonel down in South Carolina.
Don Vandergriff :But we think PME professional military education needs to be reformed first. Here's the reason you had an infiltration over the last 20 years by civilian educators into all the institutions, particularly the military academies, the war college, that are Marxist. They're alleged Marxist, they spill it. And what has been surprising to me over the last 20 years, or since 2009, when I joined Facebook, was the amount of officers and some NCOs that they're not alleged. They don't come out and say it, but you can tell they're left and that they won't control.
Don Vandergriff :They think they have to make. Really, what Marxism is all about is there's a few of us that can tell everyone else what to do, because you don't know what to do. We make decisions better than you. So I think that's naturally aligned with the military, because the military, in a way, is a socialist organization. I mean rightly so, yeah, but a lot of people start rising up through the ranks and saying you know this, this would work and work in society, but so he needs to change professional military education by purging those institutions. And I myself and several contacts that I have have a list of people that would be able to provide who these people are.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:So Don, on PME, I want to make sure our listeners understand. So I've gone through Air Command Staff College and JPME too. I've done all that so a joint qualified officer. I didn't go through any of the academies, I didn't go through ROTC. So PME just make sure our listeners understand Does that include the service academies? Is that right?
Don Vandergriff :Yeah, it's professional military education, PE, professional military. He's already started with that. Some great things that Secretary Hicks has done with the decree of firing counsel, educational counsel I don't have the exact wording, but they review the curriculums of programs of instruction, uh, to all of our institutions at the academy. So he fired all those, those people, yeah, yeah, because they were allowing critical race theory and dei uh uh, diversity, uh, inclusion, equity and inclusion, yeah, which why I'm against this is I try to avoid being political, but I am the so-called and I've talked with Mark before at Gettysburg. We had a great session up there with V-Rel great people.
Don Vandergriff :But I'm proclaimed by others as the SME subject matter expert on mission command office attack or expert on mission command office tactics, and my big argument is mission command if you have a cultural Marxist or cultural Marxism, the two do not mix. And what mission command is for your audience in simplified terms, is it's professionals who can act in the absence of orders, or the order from above is out of date because of circumstances and they're allowed by the culture to change it. Hey, thanks for putting that up there. That's great. You're right. That's one example of many. I mean that guy right, there is one example of many and that was tolerant. Now he's been kicked out, I think of the military. But.
Don Vandergriff :But there's a lot of examples. I know some young, other young, it's funny, I'm turning 62 next month but I I know some lieutenant colonel West Point. One of the young lady found a fantastic officer. She's a big follower of mine. She says she cannot believe that she has to be careful what she posts because the backlash from her class at military academy and she says do these people even love america? Do they even love the country? And it's amazing. So we have to purge the coach. Before you do that, you cannot advocate a new warfare-style organization that embodies the work of John Boyd, which John Boyd embodied, the work of Mission Command. He talks about it in several presentations. You can't have that, because when you tell exactly what people want to do in minute detail, there's no way. So we've got to change PME. In minute detail, there's no way. So we got to change PME. But along that it doesn't have to be a sequential reforms. And next thing, he has to reduce the size of the officer corps.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Okay, let's slow down a little bit here.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:We've got a couple of things going on. Earlier, you talked about the system. We have a promotion system. We have a reward system. That's changed a little bit in the last several years. We've gone from defined benefits to direct contribution plans inside the military.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:I wrote an article on this not too long ago about my personal experience with DEI, extremism training and how the system drives behaviors, and the point behind that is when you seek promotion, you're willing to accept things around you that you normally wouldn't accept, like in my case. It was hey, let's just shut up about the COVID, mandatory COVID vaccines, even though we've been through the anthrax vaccines, the mandates back 20 plus years ago. Let's just continue to go through and get to that three-year mark as an 06 so you can retire and then we'll get out. That is bad leadership, right? I pointed that out and said, hey, I failed. I read the article. It was outstanding. Thanks, don. But this is what we're getting at is the system. We talk about complex adaptive systems. You talk about mission command. We look at it through the same lens and that is the reward system, the promotion system.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Pme fits into this as well, because in a lot of services, not necessarily the Navy, maybe a little bit in Marine Corps. I can't remember if that's to be true or not, but PME is required JPME-1, jpme-2, for promotion to 06, and even to flag. Now I believe that's where it is. So you're not going there to learn, you're going there to get a check in the box. Yes, and that's what's fucked up about this is you should be there to learn.
Don Vandergriff :Yes, okay, you should be there to learn and get better. Yeah, let me give you a great example how adverse the system is. One of the best military historians in the world, which I think you guys have met, is Dr Bruce Goodmanson. Dr Goodmanson is a close friend and mentor. He's one of the finest people I've ever met, not because we have similar views, he just is a great person yeah, he's been.
Mark McGrath:He's been a guest on our show.
Don Vandergriff :He's, he's phenomenal he, he, he, he has taught me. He's helped me like you wouldn't believe, never hesitated. But bruce applied for a job at the school of advanced warfare at Quantico three or four years ago and this is an advanced course for the second year of command and general staff college for majors and he was the founder of that, I think, in the late 80s, early 90s of SAW School of Advanced Warfare. The Army has SAMS School of, yeah, advanced military studies and I think the air force and navy have their versions. What it's supposed to be is a second year of what school should be for mid-grade officers that desire to be professional operational planners, similar to what the germans did with the general staff academy.
Don Vandergriff :Bruce set this up and tried to build that on that model that he had studied and he's fluent in German, of course, and French but he could not get a job there. You know what their reasoning was. So here's a guy with a PhD from Oxford and a master's from Glasgow University in Scotland who started the school. Who started the school? I started the school. It was an award-winning, incredible, just like I said, one of the best military historians in the world. And they won't hire him because he won't conform to their political agenda. Yeah, okay, and he cause? He told me what happened and I've seen it he would off general officers and senior executives, people, because he wouldn't conform. You know, he's the guy that practices mission. Command off these tactics. Tell me, I mean the dude went to yale, I mean he's not he's not.
Mark McGrath:Uh, thank you, and oxford, so it's not. You know a lot of the credit that people say, well, these, you know, these yale scs people, are these harvard scs people? But yeah, br Bruce went to those schools and he, he started this school and he's the world's leading expert on decision forcing cases Like yeah, exactly.
Don Vandergriff :He ran. He was a fellow ran it for a while at Quantico until again he was forced out at Harvard too, I think.
Don Vandergriff :Right, yeah. So my point, going back, this is how much, if I get a chance and I feel the Lord will allow me to have a chance with Secretary Hegseth and I won't take up much of his time is, I would say we've got to cleanse these institutions, sir, and we can identify who they are before you get rolling, because this has to start at ROTC all the way up to the senior service colleges, because ROTC, think about it guys. Where are these ROTC battalions located at?
Mark McGrath:Oh yeah, I'm a product of one. And even back when, I graduated and commissioned in 1998, that type of stuff was seeping in in, where, where, where, like you were, um well, and then certain schools wouldn't even have ROTC.
Mark McGrath:Even they took federal dollars, like the Ivies, because of the don't ask, don't tell policy or whatever you know they. They would have different, different reasonings, but to, to punch his point in in we get you know, quote, unquote, flack from this. You don't have to be political to identify these things and see them firsthand. This is what's happening. And if the Chinese are our adversaries and if the Russians are adversaries or whatever, start asking the questions. If this is the stuff that we're told that makes us strong or whatever, is it making them strong? Why aren't they practicing this?
Don Vandergriff :Why aren't?
Mark McGrath:they getting more.
Don Vandergriff :You know this, that or the other thing, what I love, what Secretary Hicks has said right at the beginning. I was at his confirmation hearing when he talked about the number of generals and admirals we had in World War II versus now.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:What is that ratio A rough ratio?
Don Vandergriff :By the way, let me preface this that my officer bloat study I did in 2010 has actually gotten worse. It's available online. You guys can pull it up. Officer bloat study I did in 2010 is actually gotten worse.
Mark McGrath:Uh, and it's available online, so you guys can pull it up.
Don Vandergriff :Uh, it's the we'll make sure that we share it with our audience Cause, like I said, doge actually got it and I got a response. We got it acknowledged. That's cool, that's. Oh, there you go. You got it right there, brother. Yeah, we'll right there, brother. Yeah, we'll send a link out for everybody on this. It's, it's extensive and what was here's a real cool backstory, and then I'll get to those ratios is made.
Don Vandergriff :Lieutenant general uh bane was the director of archic and later on, lieutenant general uh, uh, what's his name? Mcmaster would be the, the director, uh, but anyway, he said this concerns me, don. He says I've read your stuff before, that I want you to do a study on the impact that Officer Bloat has on the military effectiveness. So I already had all the data. I mean I had these books behind me or notebooks of data like down here. All that's data. Anyway, I've got mountains of data and some of it came through Bruce, some come through William Lynn, some through a lot of guys that I praise in my articles now on Substack. But General Vane loved it when I presented the briefing to him and it was like a two-hour pitch with my direct boss, senior executive guy Ricky Smith, who was an outstanding practice mission command in the institutional setting. They loved it. So General Vane told me we're going to shorten this, of course, because it's 100 pages long. He says we're going to shorten this and so I can do an ex-sum pages long. He says we're going to shorten this so I can do an ex-sum. He did all these ex-sums throughout the Army because he would Blackberry me at night and tell me how it went. So here I am, a major retiree as a contractor for him. But I'm getting Blackberry messages constantly and we'd go back and forth and talk about what was going on. Shortly after that he would retire. He told me that a lot of times he was prepared to bring up the backups, which is all my data, and it just shocked these people. He was briefing but they said it's too hard to fix.
Don Vandergriff :So let me give you an example. Today I posted on one of my posts about the number of general officers. There's like 26 in Space Force, for example. With 10,000 people we have a ratio of field grades that's, the middle grades, major, lieutenant, colonel to junior grades of one to one. We have a total officer population of one to five. So that includes warrant officers, which are technicians for your audience, but I don't include those. I cut those out of my study because I was asked by General Vane did you distinguish? Because warrant officers are a different category, but still the ratio is like 17 to 18 percent, so almost one in five of your military is an officer.
Don Vandergriff :So the bigger question is what impact does that have on your culture? Because it's all about culture. As they said, saying about the economy is stupid, it's the culture is stupid. It's like you got to punch earlier and Mark's touched upon it. The way we promote, the way we value, how we get ahead, that's all about culture. And so we established this system. It's called a mobilization-based system.
Don Vandergriff :After World War II, general Marshall had a bunch of generals, including Bradley and Eisenhower, and they did a do-little commission and they said what did we do wrong to get ready for World War II that we can't do if we fight the Soviet Union in World War III? We took three to four years to mobilize, and why. Part of that problem was when we mobilized we had a bunch of old captains, majors, colonels, generals that couldn't fight on the battlefield. So during the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941, which was a great, extensive exercise, a lot of good documentation on it where the Army actually went down and did a free play exercise throughout Texas and Louisiana and after the end of the exercise there was like a list of 500 guys that Marshall said you're retiring, you're too old, you're too decrepit, you're too out of date. And Patton, by the way, was one of the oldest guys in the whole army at the time and he did outstanding. So it wasn't based on age, it was based on performance, which it should be.
Don Vandergriff :But anyway, after World War II, getting back to my point, all these guys said man, we just have a system, we have to create an officer corps which is a mobilization-based system, and that system is based on I'm going to create a bunch of officers, I'm going to give them a lot of small experiences for a short time. So when we mobilized to like 100 divisions to fight the Soviet Union from at the time, it was 9, 10. We'll have all these people with a vast experience. So what happens over the over the decades, from night? And so they pass in 1947. As a result of this, this, this study, the officer personnel act of 1947, which institutionalized up or out, up or out promotion system, for your audience is at a certain time span. I'm up for promotion and I get three chances of that below the zone, primary zone and above the zone, everything, by the way, cyclic farm in yearly cohorts.
Don Vandergriff :Why was this done? For decades, by the way. Because they didn't have a computer system until the last two decades, so everything had to be done in pencil. It was easy to track it. There was no logical reason to do that, because they didn't have a computer system until the last two decades, so everything had to be done in pencil. It was easy to track it. There was no logical reason to do that, and I can contrast that in the study with other systems that didn't do this and were far more effective.
Don Vandergriff :So they create this mobilization-based officer system versus a cadre-based system. The cadre-based system is where you have extremely highly professional guys and gals now, but for the Prussian army was a cadre based system and, and, matter of fact, their cadre system was so effective that their reserves, their army reserves, are second, third and fourth. Echelon reserves were more effective than most of the regular armies in Europe because of the level and they didn't have officers everywhere. That was a big thing. They had a very tough entrance requirement. They had testing, they had. It was just their officer corps was 2.3% at the start of World War I.
Don Vandergriff :Clarifying question too, please do.
Mark McGrath:Did they have unit? I think the brits do this and if they do this in the marine corps, I would have stayed in my entire life yeah, that you, you belong to a regiment your entire career, like you don't yeah, manning system which, so you owe, you actually take an ownership like they're gonna laugh at this.
Don Vandergriff :So this book here, this is the trust study 2000,. I think it's 2000. I was actually with Mattis when he was a brigadier general in that study. Bruce was part of it. And what we did was we provided the Marine Corps a unit manning system. Okay, and guess what? The Marine Corps told us after we spent a year on this we don't need a unit manning system. We're cohesive as the Marine Corps we already have. But so we can.
Mark McGrath:Just can we talk about that a little bit, because I think that it does differentiate a lot of the examples that you're giving on why they were so effective and why they were so powerful. So I belong to 3rd Marine Regiment. When I was commissioned I, you know, I went through my training. I went to third Marine regiment and then technically 12th, 12th Marine regiment, cause I was an artillery officer but I was first battalion 12th Marines. Right Throughout my career, like I do my fleet tours in this.
Mark McGrath:In this way, if I understand it, understood it you would go back to your unit after you'd go to Quantico or you'd go teach ROTC or you teach at the Naval Academy or you go to whatever. You always come back to your unit and what it did was it had a sense of ownership. You own that. The people that were part of it had a sense of ownership. So if I was in like the British army and I was part of the like the Irish fusiliers or whatever, I'm always part of that regiment and they have unique things and they build that kind of tribal system and I would hear people push back. They say, well, you can't do that in the marine corps because we're all marines.
Don Vandergriff :I was like, well, no, that's what they did. Our study after, yeah, a year on it and it's like 290 pages of three courses of action and I can send you the pdf link if you guys want it. But for example, this book here let me get back here Got it Unit Manning, historical Pages. We have tried the unit manning system. I want to say eight times I've got to reference my books, but eight times since before World War I, and every time the pushback has been oh, it'll become a tribal system and the Americans have to have representation throughout the country, but the Germans would die hard. So everyone goes.
Don Vandergriff :Well, the reason they fought and died to the very end in World War II and World War I was the Second World War was Nazism, which is BS. You don't understand the German culture at all and the military culture, with the exception of some bribed generals by Hitler, was divorced from political. The cohort would leave the Marine Corps, for example, and join the Marine Corps Reserve and be part of that unit they were part of and then you would build it. The Germans did something similar, where you left the regular army and became one of the tier, the three tiers. As you got older they moved up in tier, the 30 and 40-year-old guys, which were very good but not physically fit, as the older guys would be called up last. But they would be called up as a unit.
Mark McGrath:Okay, so it's a. It seems like an einheit factory.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:It seems like a mutual trust factory right exactly explain.
Mark McGrath:So, yeah, mutual. So john boyd, yeah, I know, you know. So john boyd had a lot of acronyms. One was efas, einheit, finger and Gefuel, auftragtaktik, which you're the subject matter expert on. And then Schwerpunkt and Einheit was how these units, to your point, would build mutual trust, to the point where they could develop Fingerspitz and Gefuel and they could operate on Auftragtaktik in pursuit of a, a schwerpunkt, because they absolutely trusted each other closer than family, and I think of like, who do I trust more, like more than my family, or be my fellow brother, marines, right, and and and and which, which, to the point where the Marine Corps has that. What we're talking about here is when you know you belong to a unit and you belong to that regiment and you always belong to that regiment.
Don Vandergriff :There could be things that are negative that they were pointing out, like tribalism or whatever, but the thing that the overall opportunity cost was you're losing a massive, massive piece to make mutual trust so the germans would rotate divisions off the line and they might have 20 to 30 percent of the division left, maybe even smaller, and they and they would go 20% to 30% of the division left, maybe even smaller, and they would go back to that region they came out of.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, isn't it more of a stewardship model You're? Taking stewardship of your unit. You're taking stewardship of your troops. I'm brought in here, I'm going to be here for a while, like Ponch was saying, I'm going to do my PME checks and then I go to the next place and then da, da, da, da. You know like it dilutes.
Don Vandergriff :Here's what's fascinating. The documents that Bruce and I both found was there was a document on training guidance. It was one page. It was 1892 or something. I reference it a lot, but the training guidance was on one page from the german army to the divisions and it was up to the divisions. They didn't have a problem, they didn't have standardization, they had outcomes. So the 9th cavalry division might teach how to fire and load the rifle differently than the 12th infantry division Division. It is an example. But the point was their culture to allow freedom of independence and freedom of action was more important than standardization. You see what I'm getting at. So the British problem was with the British system that they had in North Africa actually acted against them. This is why, because they didn't understand combined arms until 43 very well and they still had issues. They were so devoted to their regiment that they looked inward versus outward. The Prussian-German system was they looked outward versus inward. The cohesion was important. They looked outward versus inward. The cohesion was important.
Don Vandergriff :But what was more important was, in the culture context, their independence and ability to make decisions within the framework of a commander's intent and they felt that if we start standardizing stuff across the board, that's going to take that away. If we start having people comply with what someone in Berlin is writing but most people 99.9% don't understand that.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, well, he's a great word comply. It seems like a lot of this stuff is because of a compliance culture versus a war fighting culture.
Don Vandergriff :Yep. So what we did in the study which ties in that, was one of the common themes. So I took I forgot how many. I took several armies throughout history, including the Roman Legion, and I just happened there was a Colonel Stike. He's long retired. But when I first went down to Fort Hood as the military historian for Operational Testing Evaluation Command in 97, this guy said oh, I've read one of your articles, I know about you. I'm totally retiring. I have this great Roman Legion book collector, roman Army collection and he gave it to me. I passed it on since then to other officers.
Don Vandergriff :But the point is I did a study to include the French Army, the British Army and snapshots in history and in those slides that you just popped up a little earlier, ponch, it tells you what General Vane really liked was. I summarized good and bad points, okay, and then I got a lot of detail after that. But the good point was the most successful armies had a unit manning system. Okay. The most successful armies had an officer corps around 5% to 2.5%. Okay. The most successful armies had a very tough entrance requirement for officers. I don't think ours is tough at all. All right, looks at the wrong direction, okay. Question.
Mark McGrath:Don? Isn't it also too? It's not just officers, isn't it also getting bloated at the non-commissioned officer? I think Bruce wrote about that recently, about how the Marine squad is getting overloaded with NCOs non-commissioned officers. That it's not just unique to officers. It's getting bloated at other levels too.
Don Vandergriff :Well, the Army added sergeant majors are everywhere. I mean you've got division corps sergeant majors, brigade sergeant majors, whereas before Vietnam, I think it was you had battalion sergeant majors and that was about it. And then in order to make up or out, so the Navy tried up or out in 1916, and the reason it didn't work was the Navy didn't understand that to make up or out, so the Navy tried up or out in 1916. And the reason it didn't work was the Navy didn't understand that to make up or outright, you need a bloated system for people to move up and validate the theory. Actually it's the HR theory of equity which people I've heard mentioned on the news, but they really don't understand it. Equity is about premier of self versus premier of service and there's a lot of documentation on that. But so the study. But unit Manning was saying not a lot of overhead, but here's what the US military did. So after the 1947 Act was passed, in order to justify a larger than needed officer corps for combat, they started creating structures to support that force structure, to support that, and over the decades they became institutionalized, it just became accepted.
Don Vandergriff :I'll give you a good example the army, after vietnam, created all these brigade headquarters for engineers, air defense and I was at a conference in 2005, right after I got out and I was talking about that in one of my lectures and these two colonels got mad. These retired colonels got mad at me One was an engineer and one had been an air defense guy and he said we worked hard. I said I'm not questioning that you didn't work hard, but the reason your organization was created was for administration reasons, so you could get promoted, so your branch had a stake in it. There's no need on the battlefield for an engineer brigade. Engineers are all decentralizing the task forces to support a given mission. Air defense is all scattered all over and they're under the air, whatever the air doctrine command thing is for control anyway. So they created all military intelligence brigade really good one.
Don Vandergriff :I had another colonel at another brief got mad at me and I had the documentation where the Army says in some memorandum I've cited my books and it's in one of these binders but it says we are creating these structures in order I'm paraphrasing, in order to create promotion opportunities for these branches. Yeah, so they have no doubt. So here's the impact of what you guys realize. You guys know it, but your audience a lot. So when you have a bloated system, what's the impact on the coach? What do you guys? When you have a bloated officer system, what's the impact on the culture?
Brian "ponch" Rivera:I think you lose psych safety. So the ability to speak up to be yourself, that might be one.
Mark McGrath:The ability to inquire and offer kind of like. Adding on to what Ponch is saying. I lose the ability as a young captain to tell a colonel something that I observed that affects the overall mission, more courage goes out the window. More courage.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Yeah, you probably invite people to leave the military early.
Don Vandergriff :Well, those are effects. Okay, impacts Okay. That's all right. It's all good, but the first thing it does is when you have these higher headquarters that have to justify themselves. They're constantly seeking information to blow up.
Mark McGrath:Frame the question again.
Don Vandergriff :Yeah, frame the question again what's the impact of a bloated ulcer system? I consider a bloated ulcer system.
Mark McGrath:At the biggest level. Isn't it that the warfighting culture, the warfighting sensibilities, the warrior culture is completely thrown out the window? Yeah, okay, it's a name only. We do have things that you could technically say.
Don Vandergriff :Here's the bigger cultural impact. The focus when you have all this blow becomes inward versus outward. So what do you think I mean by that?
Mark McGrath:Yeah, you're becoming a bureaucrat like a self-looking ice cream company. That's real.
Don Vandergriff :Yeah, I just reposted it because it was great Bureaucracy, yep, but bureaucracy is a fun term, but we've got to really understand, so, what these headquarters do and directorates and whatever they demand. Constant information flow up. So you are a captain or lieutenant or a major and all you're doing is chasing data all the time.
Mark McGrath:How many times did you hear I need a list? Yeah, I need a list.
Don Vandergriff :One of the voids is I've had this happen to me what are you doing there? Don I said, well, I'm reading this campaign? Or says, well, that's something you need to do in your own time. I'm like I'm enhancing my professional, well, I need you to go do this or that. So versus the focus outward. So that's one of the things I'm worried and it it pushes the tiniest of decisions that normally are made for a lot lower upper to the upper level. So decisions that may be a captain or a major or even a Lieutenant may, are now made by colonels and generals.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Yeah, that's the a thousand mile screwdriver, right.
Don Vandergriff :Yeah, but the point is it happens all the time. So now, instead of developing, your real reason to have lieutenants and captains is to make them combat ready to be majors and, above and when, they're not doing that and plus, their commissioning source is teaching them cultural Marxist crap, even if they have a desire not to believe that, and they got commissioned and they were able to say that's crap, they're not getting their opportunities. Here's another thing, mark, that you've made a good decision to get out of the Marine Corps. When I was at Quantico, I was working with the manpower reform system, again one of the things I was not supposed to do, but I was doing anyway because it kept coming to me. Every day Someone would come to me and I pissed off the GSs around me because they're always asking for you Okay, let me go out and just do my thing, I'll earn my pay, but don't. They wanted to interfere all the time, but you know how long a battery commander in the Marine Corps may have 12 months or less.
Don Vandergriff :Six, 12 months, yeah. And the determining factor is they go through their first MAGTAG war fighting exercise. Yeah, nwx at 29. Once, once they do that, they're good on. I mean, like six months, are you kidding me? And and and here's the reason they do it the feed, the mobilization system they over commission. They never admit it. But we got to give everyone an opportunity. So I interviewed hundreds of officers in all branches and their common theme is just as I'm starting to get to know my job, or something I thought I did, well, I realize now I didn't do, well, I'm leaving. We keep saying all these think tanks oh well, warfare is getting more complex. Warfare is not getting more complex. The problem is the system we have does not let people learn how to deal with it. I just posted a thing about the drone, the report by the first lieutenant about drone unit, drone uh evolution and the main thing, he even says it at the end.
Don Vandergriff :Our personnel system is not aligned with the ability to stay here long enough, either at the nco or the officer level, to learn about how to make drones work better yeah okay. So what's our response as a DOD military to this? Instead of fixing the system, what do we do? We throw tons of money at high-tech stuff.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Yep.
Don Vandergriff :Because deep down some have admitted it, some generals to me when I've talked to them that'll compensate for a personal management system and development system that's way out of date and wrong. So Don.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:one of the things we try to help organizations on is you organize around the context. So if the technology is changing not the nature war, but moving from fourth to fifth generation fighters we're moving to drone capabilities you design your organization around the context. Would you agree with that?
Don Vandergriff :Yeah, well, exactly, context. Uh, would you agree with that? Yeah, but well, exactly. I mean so the german counter in world war one to massed artillery and trench warfare? The allied response was more technology, but they kept their force structure the same and their pme and everything. The germans completely revamped. They took out a whole level of force structure, okay, and then they decentralized everything for the first time in european history to the squad level where they could drive a decision that that would usually been left to a brigade or division commander. You know when they broke through that was a radical and you could see most of that explained very well in bruce's. Uh, storm troop tactics, german innovation, the german 14, 1918. But required reading for my cadets, by the way, when I was at Georgetown.
Mark McGrath:Companies should read that book. I mean, maybe you need coaches like us to help you extract the concepts, but to see is like if you're open to learning something from another place. The military and the military history is one of the best places, just because these concepts never change to a point.
Don Vandergriff :I just did a workshop for First Main Financial up in Baltimore in January with Nemertis, who I work with. Great people, great thinkers there, and they came back on the AAR later, two weeks later, and like wow, we've never had all these people, all these managers, sit there for six, seven hours and then get motivated about this stuff. So what you're saying, mark, all this stuff we're talking about, are principles that can be applied to any organization that wants to evolve and be effective. Because one of the things I ask people how many biologists are in here and maybe I'll have one most audiences. I said so. What happens in biology? If an animal or bugs or whatever does not evolve with its environment? It dies, dies, yep, don't answer that, don't say that it dies. So organizations are the same way, because they're made up of people. If you don't evolve with your changing environment, you know driven by-.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:You don't stay far from equilibrium, do you?
Mark McGrath:Yeah, yeah exactly that's true. Yeah, exactly. Yeah right.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:So on that, on the natural science portion of this, the concepts we've learned over, you know, in the military, over hundreds of years, thousands of years, actually are, I would argue, supported by natural science. One of them would be you don't need a large hierarchy. More than three levels of hierarchy is almost too much. So, even though natural science, natural law, says this, we try to go against that. And how many levels do we have now? Just 11. Yeah, that's ridiculous.
Don Vandergriff :And most organizations have seven to 11 right now and they're filled up with officers. The big cry is I don't have enough platoon leaders in my company. So the German company would have the commander and a deputy commander for four or five platoons NCLs read that were led. The rest of the platoons, the army and Marine Corps too. Oh, I've got to have a Lieutenant everywhere I'm like dude, you know it's, it's all about developmental experience in something that's very complex, but we do this, the opposite.
Mark McGrath:So the British rural, the opposite.
Don Vandergriff :So the british rural, navy, just they put up a circle not long ago that they now have more admirals than ships, and we're going to be that way too. I mean it's. Yeah, I think we have a 243 total admirals. I put the data on one of my sub stack.
Mark McGrath:Wow we talk about tech I mean, tech is tech becomes, I think, for any, you know, for any organization, military or whatever everybody starts focusing on the tech and they forget all the other things, like the leadership. And we talk a lot on the show about unrestricted warfare, the Chinese white paper that was written 98, 97. 98, 97. By the way. They read Boyd, they read the Changing Face of War, they read all the things we're talking about and guess what it's all manifesting. And I would add too, too, there's another unrestricted warfare by james larose or derose um about the submarine officers of world war ii.
Mark McGrath:It's james f derose, yeah, and what it was talking about was yeah, there were all these new technologies, that all of these uh officers before them that were just basically career box checkers. They were engineers, they were, they were risk averse I'm listening and they, they.
Mark McGrath:What they needed was guys like uh uh, dudley morton and richard o'kane and eugenia flucky, all these others that basically broke the rule book. They threw the rule book out in the garbage. The concepts of nautical navigation, those things didn't change. The tech changed and they became basically like buccaneers, and that's how they destroyed the Japanese Imperial Navy, because they were allowed.
Don Vandergriff :Well, they had some merchant marine. They destroyed the ability to supply. Yeah, but they were allowed to.
Mark McGrath:But like the guys previously that grew up um in the old system, it was one of technical management, it was one of bureaucracy, it was one of just being a really competent engineer, not a war fighter have you guys seen that book?
Don Vandergriff :it was only written a few. I've got it somewhere on my bookcase. Turn that ship around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, have you guys had him on your show? No, we know, Dave Marquet, that is the best example I've seen of a book that explains mission command applied to technology.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Well, let's build on that because, remember, in a submarine there's less than 150 people. That's Dunbar number. You are taught mission command. You have highly trained people on submarines. I mean, they go through a different curriculum than most sailors do, right, and it's very aligned to high reliability theory somewhat, crew resource management, some things like that. So they have critiques, they have after action reviews. They do the same things aviators do, but the difference is you got a commander who is new to a ship or a new type of ship. He has less than 150 people and not everybody has this, by the way, right, and they're well-trained and he understands mission command, all right. So those things have to be aligned. And what I'm getting at is not all organizations have 150 people, they have 1,000, right. Your span of control, right, right.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Your span of control. You got to remember that. What's in your span of control? What can you do? Do you understand mission command? Yeah, yes, have you been trained on it? And most, most people outside the military have not. So the conditions for what he did on the Santa Fe are phenomenal. Not everybody has that and it's not a one for one. You can't take that out of a submarine community and go to an organization and say this is how you do it. Well, you got to teach a mission command.
Don Vandergriff :You got to develop your people. You got to develop your people.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Yeah, there you go, you got to develop them the right way.
Don Vandergriff :That's what these people that I'm going out and doing these workshops for like I'm doing the Northern Virginia emergency thing that does- all two weeks from now, it's the non-technical skills they were like this is so much different than they were normally taught.
Don Vandergriff :Let me blow you guys away. We were talking about the Chinese. I found out four years ago that the Chinese call me the Sun Tzu of the American Army. It was classified in that guys tell me this, tell me that. But for me to read up on, I had to go into a what's it called the classified room, or skiff, yeah, skiff. But I'm like so our military doesn't embrace that. You've got your main opponent that has labeled me that they read all my stuff over there. Of course they can't do it because their culture is the communist government does not tolerate that kind of thinking, that kind of action.
Don Vandergriff :The communist government does not tolerate that kind of thinking, that kind of action. But it just amazes me how we have become in our society. We're the resume coach. That's why Upper Out has survived, because I retired as a colonel, I retired as a general or an admiral. You see that on the news I mean even on the conservative news they love these labels, they love these titles. I don't care what a title is.
Don Vandergriff :It's about substance, and here's a distinct difference. In the German Prussian army, to become a commission officer was the biggest thing you could achieve in that society. There was a professor at Wolfsburg University not Wolfsburg, but it was one of the major universities who would. He was given an honorary commission as a lieutenant and he had a PhD in the late 1890s, which was hard as hell then to get. And he, he, he prized that more as his honorary commission than his PhD because it was difficult. That's what people don't want to understand. It has to be John what's his name? The merchant marine guy that does mission command. He's just had a lot of posts on X. I just talked to him the other day.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:I have to look at that, don't know, sure.
Don Vandergriff :Anyway, I just talked to him the other day and he does great. He's a merchant marine guy. He was on my Facebook page, Mission Command, until I got off of it, which I quit my own page because there was too many Marxists on it. It was. It was incredible they didn't know it. So anyway, john did great with applying Mission Command.
Don Vandergriff :but he says the fundamental thing to make Mission Command work is very tough entrance requirements entrance requirements, not like stupid hazing like West Point used to do, which Dr George moves book described in detail the two differences between West Point and German development from 1900 to 1940 command culture by your move, dr George move. But the point is that John is always talking about you know, the merchant Marine has to do these tests and these exercises and all that before they get certified. And one of the guys popped up and said yeah, the military needs that too. We went to a degree system. You have a cause degree or you do drill and ceremony or you do all these fundamental basic tasks. Because first of all, we didn't understand what was required to apply medical insurance requirements or engineering requirements to the military. Now we do and we still don't do it. Ok, but what ROTC, for example, does is they're still into basically mastering tasks and their leadership approach is very process oriented. Leadership approach is very, uh, process oriented. Uh.
Don Vandergriff :I wrote a study in 2005 and 6 which got me my job that I've worked at arctic by general burns and there's an article that guy wrote on it. It's like 265 pages. This is if, if we really want to make rotc the same level as medical school and engineering and the real professions. This is what we got to do to do it, yeah uh, and boy man, I had again. I had threats and everything else and, like you're, I had a colonel down at trade off and I was briefing this around for three or four years after I retired oh, you're a nazi. He said if we can't do that in the uS Army military, because those are Nazi standards. I said dude the Biden.
Mark McGrath:How did men get on the moon? Yeah exactly Nazis. That's a great point. Yeah, the requirements.
Don Vandergriff :So John Kahn says his name. John has written, he's posted some great stuff on X and he said he contacted me. He said, oh, I was called up to talk to the Navy department a couple of weeks ago. They didn't even know what mission command was. No, they don't. I brought them to work up and they had no idea. And this is the new regime which, again, I love what secretary XF is starting to do. You brought on Stu Schiller and Matt. Lennar great guys, moral courage that show what needs to happen.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:The Navy's getting hung Cal. I mean it's great I've not met him yet.
Mark McGrath:Hey, punch, and Don you probably know about this too, punch, do you remember when the Navy did away with SWAS, like Surface Warfare Officer School, and they went to like a resident, like do it on CD-ROM and, like you go out to your ship and you just learn self-directed. Can you imagine that?
Don Vandergriff :That's again the check-in-the-block process that just undermines professionalism. But that was great what you said. We wouldn't have made it to the moon if engineering practiced what the military does now.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:We're not promoting Nazi?
Don Vandergriff :No, we're not promoting Nazi.
Mark McGrath:The facts are john yeah the reference is nazi scientists that made the v2 rockets and other things. They came, they were, they were. It was called operation paperclip. They rounded them all up, they brought them over the united states.
Don Vandergriff :They created nasa, essentially yeah, yeah, but but it was not even had nothing to do with the, the, the culture of Nazism. Right, the science of right, right yeah.
Mark McGrath:And leadership too, but the irony is that they were actual Nazis. I mean, these were members of the Nazi party. I mean, and that, that, that, that can't be that can't be, that you've got to have right.
Don Vandergriff :Where humanity, uh, is over, is over the end result you want.
Mark McGrath:You know, from a tangible point of view, intangibles always outweigh tangibles it's like saying I can't learn anything from blitzkrieg tactics because they're nazis. That's ridiculous. Here's a big one I've gotten from officers for years.
Don Vandergriff :Well, they lost two world wars. So here's my first point. I'm not going to deny they were bad strategies. But here's the problem with the German army and of both wars was they were so good at the operational tactical level that they made more enemies than they could kill them. Their strategy was to win battles. And if they won enough battles, that would win the war. That was the problem. And then, of course, in World War II you had Hitler, which is an evil psychopath.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, talk about top-heavy organizations. They moved that way. Yeah Well, a lot of the I mean there's the Rommel myth, they say but a lot of those professional officer class that got executed for trying to kill Hitler. You know what's Stolfenberg? There was the Stolfenberg plot. There was the general that wrote Troop and Furing. He tried to kill Hitler.
Don Vandergriff :There was 41 attempts from 1933 on and they all failed, unfortunately.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:And let's not forget about the use of methamphetamines over there as well. That's right.
Mark McGrath:The blitz yeah the blitz yeah that's a good one too.
Don Vandergriff :But the bigger point was so they had a strenuous professional entrance requirement to officers and in the study, the officer bloat study, that was the common theme I saw, and in the opposite unsuccessful armies didn't have that theme at all. So it was more on favoritism and things that were not relevant to the art of war.
Mark McGrath:Have you ever looked at I mean, how come the IDF is so successful. Have you ever looked at it?
Don Vandergriff :The irony is the IDF took all the best ingredients of the Wehrmacht and brought it down. And no one wants to admit that. But even Shamir and Martin Van Crevel, who I both know great historians, have admitted it in their writings, who I both know great historians, have admitted it in their writings. But the IDF, the other reason the IDF was they're so good at it, was the area that they're fighting in allowed them to focus on the tactical and operational level, but they're a high trust, the way that they train officers and the way that they screen and vet isn't it a?
Don Vandergriff :high trust. Yeah, but it's also not a top heavy system yep uh, well, I have the israeli portion of that study is, and I talk about that too. But the idf? Uh was a unit manning system too so let me tell you a funny quick story.
Don Vandergriff :When I joined the national guard out of the marine corps reserve because I changed over to rotcC I went into the 278th ACR and at the first couple of drills at home station in Clinton, tennessee, I was like, wow, what have I gotten into these guys? They're sloppy, they drink right after drill and then they go down. But they've all been tank crews together for years. So they go down to Fort Stewart and do a gunnery for a three-day Muta 7 or Muta 9. The whole weekend they do a gunnery at Fort Stewart and these guys are knocking the crap. They're smooth. Why? Because they've been together. They build cohesion. So in the Army that focuses on material and the surface, yeah, they didn't look the soldiers that I had been. I don't want you to believe, but when it came down to doing their jobs they didn't look the soldiers that I was had been. Oh, they didn't watch the bleed, but when it came, down to doing their jobs.
Mark McGrath:They were really good at it. The best book have you read? Lion's Gate by Steven Pressfield. Yes, I did.
Mark McGrath:I mean everybody in leadership should read that book. I mean it's basically about the Six-Day War. Yep and Pressfield is known for his fiction in this nonfiction book, but one of the things that they do and chat, by the way, featured it on his website because there are so many Boyd sort of themes in it, and he has also the disclosure. I'm going to delete any comment about politics. This isn't about politics. It's about looking at and if you read that book and you can do it with an open mind you realize that, just like you're talking about all the guys in the IDF that won the civil or the six day war, they all knew each other, they all. They knew everybody in their unit intimately, from the lowest rank to the highest rank, and and and everybody in between and and and they have. I mean that that is a ownership system, that's a stewardship system.
Don Vandergriff :So the Israelis went into Southern Lebanon 2003 and got their asses kicked. Why was that? They?
Don Vandergriff :probably negated all those things that made them and they focused on and the chief of staff and their hierarchy were all technicians from the Air Force and Navy and the army and they all sold out to the click of precision fires and all the stuff that had made them successful before. That were like their army. After the 82 invasion of Lebanon, I adopted the U S military officer system and became mass production. They got away from. Oh man, you wanted to be an officer in the IDF up till 82. It was. It was tough. First you had to be a Sergeant and that was tough, and then you had to go through a course that only about 20 to 15% made it through it and they kept their officer numbers very low until after 82.
Don Vandergriff :Now they realize their mistakes in 2003. And that's why they were able. They they fixed a lot of them after that. Okay, so at least they were evolving and learning from lessons, whereas we have. We have so much stuff on unit manning and we feel why do we refuse to do unit manning other than the myths that we talked about?
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Don't know.
Don Vandergriff :What do you got? They want the ability to move individuals around to fill slots and in the unit manning system. When we practiced cohort that was so successful in the 80s and early 90s they couldn't touch those people. Now they made a deal with the personnel management system in the Army PERSCOM at the time or Human Resources Command now. But the deal was okay. We'll do these cohort units at the company and battalion level but we can still mess with officers because the original plan was three-year cycles of units and the officers had to stay with the unit the whole three years. But to sell it to the system they said officers are not part of that. They can go in the unit but as soon as they fulfill their requirement to be a commander or platoon leader, whatever, we can move them because they want that flexibility to do it and they're under the belief under up or out, that they need a lot of experiences and a lot of things.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, outsourced, that you wouldn't take warfighters out of warfighting roles and you wouldn't be diminishing? Uh, pme, you know, to have a officer work at manpower affairs for three years at quantico, or to have have someone working in, you know, recruiting or whatever, uh, you know, do you ever look at that as as ways that that our edge is lost?
Don Vandergriff :well it. It's important, like before, up to world war ii and up to vietnam, you had officers, for example, serving as the s2, the intelligence officer, but he came from the line unit and and and those kind of jobs. It's good because you're getting a sense of what those guys do or did as we've specialized the branches more like we specialized special forces. Before we specialized special forces, you were an infantry. You got an aviator that could be a Green Beret and you had that experience. Come in with them on that. So as we specialize more, they lose touch and again they focus inward versus outward. So that's a tricky question.
Mark McGrath:Uh, regarding what you just I know what you're trying to say yeah, I mean I guess the exception would be say, like if you read mattis's book that he wrote with bing west that we had recently, you know he talks about his stint commanding a recruiting station. I mean all the concepts he applied at a warfighter he's still applying as a recruiting officer, so I guess I've read the book.
Don Vandergriff :Yeah, yeah.
Mark McGrath:I guess. I guess what I'm saying is is the system designed to dilute that versus versus encourage?
Don Vandergriff :it, I don't know, Pete says right now he's doing a build a morale tour. Yeah. That's an installed trust. Okay, they know this guy because of what the media said about him, but here's the real guy which I believe in, and he's going out there with NCOs and company grade officers doing stuff with him. Yeah, a lot of people criticize him doing all this PT, but that's not the point. The point is here's the secretary of defense. Yeah, he can do the PT, okay, but he's sitting there and he had all these ncos and everybody else talking to him.
Don Vandergriff :Okay, he's not better than that. He's in a big level of responsibility, overwhelmed, but he's out there doing stuff and seeing what they're going through and that's so right now he's doing that build the trust, because the trust was blown not only under biden, but under obama. Okay, yeah, trump didn't know, not only under Biden but, under Obama Okay, yeah, trump didn't know.
Don Vandergriff :I'm a big Trump fan. I'm not being politics, but I'm saying this and then also criticize when I think he can do something better. His first four years he appointed all the wrong people Okay, and he didn't understand. He said we build a strong military yeah, he did it with money, but he didn't understand. He's admitted to it. The best thing that happened to him was not getting elected in 2020 because he sat back for four years and analyzed what he did wrong, and that's a big thing Okay.
Don Vandergriff :And one of the things he didn't realize was all these people that are successes in the bureaucracy, in the military, were not all they were made out to be. Right. Okay.
Mark McGrath:So, go ahead. No, so I was going to just shift a little bit. So punch and I have talked a lot about, uh, you know us coming from the naval branches about, uh, you know ships colliding and captains getting relieved and you know skippers information warfare getting relieved or whatever. Have you have you looked at the navy at all and like why they seem to have this uptick in systems? Is it because you think they're too technical or anything like that? They're way too technical.
Don Vandergriff :The Air Force and the Navy are way too technical and, what's sad, again, history proves them otherwise. The IDF, for example, the top graduates from all their officer selection were first wanted to be in pilots because they had to have that independence and rapid decision-making. And the largest uh next step was infantry officers. And the israels were the first to admit, other than the germans, that these are tough, tough fields to be in and we need the best in there, whereas we took the cultural norm of oh, you're going after you must be a knuckle dragger or whatever yeah okay.
Don Vandergriff :So they, they buy into the technological, just like the Israelis did in 2003,. Invasion of Lebanon, when the Hezbollah handed them their lunch, because they went away from all the things, all the principles that made them good, but it was a technological focus. So I did the integration of the railroad and telegram and substack last week with office tactic because Vaughn Mokey the elder, the chief of staff, from 58 to 88, 30 years, wow, and he said how can I use technology to enhance mission command, not the other way around? Yeah, okay.
Mark McGrath:That's like the difference between Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson, right Like, robert E Lee didn't understand that tactics had to change because of the mini ball, whereas Stonewall Jackson understood that the tactics have to change because of the mini ball.
Don Vandergriff :Yeah that's a good way to put it. But, again. You establish a culture of trust and mission command, empowerment through professional sessions, and then it's able to adopt better to evolving technology. Versus what we do is, oh, we're going to take the technology and we'll somehow fit the peg in the square hole. Yeah.
Mark McGrath:Make this work.
Don Vandergriff :That's what's wrong with the Navy and the Air Force.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:I want to build out a few things, a couple of snowmobiles with you guys and really actionable things that our military leaders can take away from this conversation. We need to give them some of that. So I want to start with something you brought up earlier, and that's the unit side of things in your studies, and one way to mitigate or manage that is through boundary spanners and Don. You have the book. I gave you a copy of it on page 221 in the flow system. It's right there. Boundary spanners is how you can actually man there you go Now. Remember, that book was created after the 2017 Mishaps at Sea and really what I saw when we were working on it was Accenture Booz Allen. Those folks that were involved with that study inside the Navy did not like the idea of the Kenevan framework. They did not like red teaming.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:They did not like Wardley mapping they did not like the idea of the Kenevan framework, they did not like red teaming, they did not like Wardley mapping. They did not like these things that were a I'll call it a phase shift on how you-.
Don Vandergriff :You know why they didn't like them.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Probably because it goes against their models.
Don Vandergriff :yeah, no, because they're so arrogant in their status, that's right, they're adversarial. They mean they challenged the status quo.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Yeah and then so. So the documents that went up to navy leadership and, of course, nothing happened after the accidents. Nothing changed, you know, we got a bunch of dei and extremism training. We didn't get the actual things like teaching people how to work together as teams. Yeah, teaching them red teaming. We lost the red team in school we've had.
Mark McGrath:That's not a controversial or political statement.
Don Vandergriff :That's a fact. I know the guy that created the red team in school.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Yeah, we lost these things that matter, the things that we're actually coaching people in organizations. So actionable items for me are hey, learn about complex adaptive systems. Put that in PME. We've had wicked problems. We have these things. Really understand what the OODA loop is about. Not the fucking OODA thing, but the nonlinear complex about the systems thing.
Don Vandergriff :And how that applies to AI. All have that diagram. That's about it. I have my students go through exercises on how to do the OODA loop. My AR is all around the OODA loop, yeah, yeah.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:And then you know separating decisions from outcomes. Why do we need to do that in complex environments? Why do we do after-act reviews? Why do we do effective debriefing to understand multiple perspectives of what happened? Right, Going back to red teaming things. So I got a couple of other things I want to throw out. There is hey, these things are out there. They're actually from the military right, We've had these things inside the DOD. Go find them and amplify them.
Mark McGrath:And if you don't know, where to look, call us because we can point to them. We say all the time that the you know people I experienced in this almost you know, you know, over 15 years on wall street people didn't want to hear it if it came from a military person or like a boy or whatever. But what I was always trying to explain was that a lot of the complex systems theories were coming out of the military, in that they're dealing with the ultimate form of complexity, which is war, fighting, which is combat, and people didn't want to. People didn't want to hear it. It's also to and Don, you're the king of this, and so is Bruce Govinson. Bruce Govinson said this on our show One of the values, even if you're non-military and punch. What was his name? Chris from Google that we had on to talk about why he studies war, fighting and decision working last name product ownership, guy product ownership at Google.
Mark McGrath:But he was basically saying that the value for non-military people to the study of the military history is because the record is so clear and there's so many different perspectives that you can, you can, you can track.
Mark McGrath:It's almost like human history is military history, because human history is all conflict yeah and if you don't understand that and if you don't take the time, it doesn't matter how good your tech is, and then that that's been proven. You were pointing that out don with the israelis in 2003. You know it doesn't good like the navy with all this stuff. It doesn't matter how awesome your tech is, the, the enemy gets a vote and if the enemy understands these things and you don't, you're in a lot of trouble yeah, yeah exactly.
Mark McGrath:You know. It's just uh, we were working on something recently. If your competitors understand this and you don't, and you ignore this, that's fine. This is the opportunity cost. They're going to strike right here and you're going to have no answer for it, and that's why blockbuster is blockbuster yeah, exactly, exactly you brought that up with that view rail thing.
Don Vandergriff :That was cool conversation when you brought that up.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, and they get it. They get it. They are a people ideas things company. They really do understand that and they understand that their technology that they have serves people and it serves humans and humankind and that's a company that gets it. And there's others out there and there's others that are willing to listen and what we're saying and what I say is why would I need to study Don Vandergriff's book about Army Mission Command? Because the concepts that Don was talking about is universal in nature and it applies.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Explaining that to a product owner, though, is when you say you know product ownership came from Mission Command. They're like they have no clue.
Don Vandergriff :I've sent these books out all to the key people in DOD, yeah, so I just stuck to one book, because I think this book gets at everything we're talking about?
Mark McGrath:And what's chapter one is my favorite. Oh, it's about boy noodle.
Don Vandergriff :Yeah, it is, yeah, it's about boy noodle, but it is.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, I mean, I think that, like the other thing I would add to what Ponch was saying was morals and ethics.
Don Vandergriff :Yeah.
Mark McGrath:Because, so, important, so important, because if you don't believe that you're, if you don't have a moral and ethical compass being an officer when you swear to take an oath to to uphold the constitution number one, also to to defend the life, liberty and property. Yeah, we had. We had Tom Wright on to talk about the fat Leonard scandal.
Don Vandergriff :Yeah, I mean, that was good show.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, and these sorts of these sorts of things only can emerge in an organization that's not caring about morals and ethics, that's not holding people to moral and ethical standards. That historically I don't think there's always corruption, no one's arguing that, but at that level and scale and that lack of punishment, lack of accountability.
Don Vandergriff :The bigger reason you stick to those principles is it's a higher calling and it allows you to ignore or not be suckered in or bribed into these, these frauds and so forth, because your calling is more important than things, money and time. So that's, that's the bigger reason to have a moral and ethical compass.
Mark McGrath:When did you see like moral and ethical training? Like you know, walk through the history of that. How have you seen that Evan Flo in your examination of history? Obviously, to be a military officer in any respect, you have to have some kind of moral compass and you have to have some kind of a system of values. How do you talk about the history of that compass?
Don Vandergriff :and you have to have some kind of a system of values. How do you talk about the history of that? Again, it's we have been. We have switched that over because we are drawn in by like punch talked about the rewards of being promoted, the awards of getting certain status, over saying the right thing. Moral courage is my biggest thing. That Without moral courage and trust you cannot have it's to be or to do right, exactly Because when you're in combat it all talks about it. One of the finest manuals ever written was the 1933 Troop and Fever.
Mark McGrath:It had 32 pages Ludwig Beck, right, yeah, and he's the guy that tried to kill Hitler.
Don Vandergriff :Yep, yeah, Because it talks about the reason. I can't say the word Bruce can. The 26 letter German word of strength of character starts with a V Berkeskann, not. Okay. The fact is, when you're strength, have strength of character and you're alone in the battlefield, you will make the right decision. And if you don't practice that all the time, you're not going to be able to do that. Okay, so that's the strategic corporal, right? That's yeah, but more so how to get there with that? And let me give you a quick thing.
Don Vandergriff :In my study of officer development, officer selection, the academies I don't know if they do it now, but every hour of every day was laid out for them. The Germans purposely left a lot of open time and you know, our seniors at the academies get more time off and it's a lot more strict. The first three years they started they wanted basically the old saying I'll give them enough rope, They'll hang their self. They wanted to see how they did on their own. Okay, when they were off duty, for example, when they were were given time. What did they do with that free time? When you structure everything like so, you guys would laugh.
Don Vandergriff :In 2011 or 10 or 2011, general smith was the commander cadet command. He was a big fan of mine. He had me go everywhere to teach and I went to this conference on adaptability that ROTC hosted at Fort Knox. They showed the six-week advanced camp for where juniors between an MS3, junior year and senior year go for the big check block on how they're going to be branched and everything. Every hour was checked off with something for them to do. They said we're adaptive. I said how is this adaptive? Every hour was checked off with something for them to do, Okay, and they said this is a we're adaptive. I says how's this adaptive? You got six weeks and every minute, every hour, is telling them all they got to do is learn the process and they can be successful and do do the physical training tests really well, as the first thing they evaluate on day two is how well they do on the physical fitness. I'm all for physical fitness. That's the reason I wrecked my body, because I was obsessed by it for combat reasons. I'd always be ready for it. They check that block and then they basically know exactly what's going to happen to them.
Don Vandergriff :A smart cadet I don't blame them would study this and know what they had to do to get the best evaluations and my redesign for it was they don't know anything when they get there and they're just given missions and say here's your mission. You know within this time frame that they practice. You've got to start practicing mission command with commander's intent, the proper commander's intent, not the check process that the Marines and Army use, where you've got it laid out for them. But it's got to be a concise, well-written statement with the parameters I call them parameters the limitations and what you want done without telling them how to do it. That has to start at the very beginning. The these are process. Our PME for processing assessing officers is so out of date. It's all industrial age, Henry Ford would love it, Frederick Taylor would love it and we still do it.
Mark McGrath:But it's all like hiring, whiz kids right, not war fighters.
Don Vandergriff :I wouldn't even say that Whiz kids are at least given. Well, macklin, they're a whiz kid.
Mark McGrath:But how do they become a whiz kid first, okay, I guess what I mean when I think, you know, my dad's West Point class of 74. And when I think of that cohort, I think of whatever state they came from, their captain of the football team, class president, you know, track star, that kind of thing. Not the best math student, I mean, they're all good at math because that's just the way the system was back then.
Mark McGrath:But like now I think of like technical math, science, stem, like a STEM kid, and I think of the kids that went to the academies. When my own children graduated from high school, they weren't the captain of the football team class president. That kind of a deal.
Don Vandergriff :But it was a tangible something they could see. We've always based on our evaluations on tangibles. Why? Because they're easy to justify. You don't want to go into the deep philosophical study like bruce and I do, and you guys do that really understand something. Then the evaluation system we would develop for determining who's the best combat officer would be totally different from what we do now you know ranger ranger school, for example.
Don Vandergriff :Okay, I worked with those guys trying to reform that in 2012. Great captains and majors Now, yeah, you've got to deal with lack of sleep and lack of food and not getting hurt. That's the biggest way you get out of ranger school. But we miss an opportunity again. Okay, the way we wanted to change it was here's your mission, here's your resources. Figure it out, okay, and here's your outcome. But they drill the processes. So they were bitching to me when I went down to teach a couple of my workshops at the Mountain Phase Great guys, great friends I made I'm still friends with them. They said they show up and they had the Ranger handbook memorized on the process. Okay, and yeah, because that's reward system. Okay, Versus, let's see how they adapt to emission conditions, okay, and that's what they need to do. But we love, we favor the tangibles over the intangibles, and that's the's what they need to do. But we, we love, we favor the tangibles over the intangibles, and that's the biggest error and that comes from some things have their value.
Mark McGrath:I mean like if, if we all pack our packs the same way in the unit, if there's an emergency, I know where the first aid kit is right, sop's, I'm not saying throw the baby out with the bat yeah yeah, yeah right, okay, but I guess I guess what I'm hearing you say. Then it's more of like if I took a formulaic or templated approach to chaos, I'm going to lose every time, exactly.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Yeah, you can't do that, so I think yeah.
Don Vandergriff :So using the framework, the ordered side, ordered systems approach, which we need to tag talks a lot about the impact of the ordinance core and the industrial age and the forward assembly line process to leader development.
Mark McGrath:We've got to get Bruce back on. We've mentioned his name so many times and he really is the authority on this stuff. And he also knew John Boyd. He had a lot of interactions with Boyd. Yep, he did. And the stuff again that Bruce talks about and you talk about and we talk about, yeah, it came from the military, but it has universal value. Yep, sure does.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Good stuff, Don. Hey, let's wrap it up there. We'll keep you on for a few minutes, but we'll definitely have you back anytime you want to come on. Actually, this is just a conversation.
Don Vandergriff :Actually, this is just a conversation with you guys. It's fun, man, you know. I mean we got to do this because we all spread it around and we can get people to listen and like, at least make them ask Is this? We're not doing this right? You know, I've had a lot of converts that say they were totally sold on the process. They started thinking Again. They had moral courage, they had a value system. This doesn't sound right. That's what we want people to do.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Challenge assumptions, challenge all the assumptions which we were not allowed to do over the last four years, by the way. I just want to point that out.
Don Vandergriff :I know that To be fair I would say it's longer than four years. Ponch way, I just want to point that out.
Mark McGrath:I know that To be fair I would say it's longer than four years, poncho. I think that it's been a gradual grind.
Don Vandergriff :The Resume Society. It's deeper than that. That four years just came out the last four years, because we finally looked away from a moral standard and we elected someone because it sounded great and we were fooled by the propaganda. A few of us weren't, but it was the greatest propaganda brainwashing machine, even better than the Soviets and the Chinese let's remember too that you know, when Boyd and the reform movement, it happened under Carter and Reagan.
Mark McGrath:It wasn't. It wasn't relative to one party or one like I said, we're a resume society.
Don Vandergriff :But Boyd see, here's what I love Boyd's work. I've read everything and, like you, Mark, I've been up there the archives, know all his acolytes. But here's the big thing with me, with Boyd that I admire of was his moral courage. Yeah, that was first. Before he said something, he knew what he was talking about, he questioned it and then he stated and stood by what he believed. That's what we need again.
Don Vandergriff :Yeah, and we've lost it in our society. We have, and that's why we're in 36 trillion dollar debt, because everyone went along. We can look the other way If you did speak out and then you were pounded. I've told people about this checklist thing five points. I've lost four jobs since I retired. Guess what it was on me. Fine, I never lost a job in moral or unethical conduct.
Mark McGrath:Bing West said on our show and you know Bing and you know Bing's work.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Bing.
Mark McGrath:West said on our show yeah, and you know, and you know Bing, and you know Bing's work, bing West. Bing West said on our show, quoting Toynbee no empire and we could, we could include bureaucracies, like I wrote about with Kennedy. No empire was destroyed from without Yep. They're all destroyed from within Yep Very good 100. All destroyed from within Yep Very good, 100%.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:I think that's a great place to wrap this one up, guys. Thanks, brother.
Don Vandergriff :Thank you, I really enjoyed that. I look forward to it. You guys are awesome. You're doing great work and I'm glad to call you friends.
Brian "ponch" Rivera:Likewise Don Really appreciate it.
Mark McGrath:Thanks, don Yep, okay.
