How To Level Up Your Leadership with Chief of Navy Reserve - Vice Admiral John Mustin | Part 1

I've got a staff and I've got a team and they're looking at me and if I come in and I am moping and grouchy and pissed, they're going to be too. Instead, I want to greet them every day with a sense of optimism like, hey, I don't care how hard this challenge is that we're dealing with, we're going to figure it out and it's going to be awesome. And if you want to be a member of this elite high performing team, then that's the way you carry yourself and you work that down national on with your folks too. So in order to participate, I'm pretty candid saying, I only want high performers on my team. Okay, welcome back. We're welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Jervé, by trade and training a high performance psychologist. And I'm thrilled to welcome Vice Admiral John Muston to the podcast for this week's conversation. What is it like to lead 59,000 people? What if those people are spread out all over the world? Chief of Navy Reserve or CNR, Vice Admiral John Muston knows exactly what it's like. And he does it with a singular laser guided priority in mind, war fighting readiness. So what exactly does readiness look like? When it comes to performing at the highest level, Vice Admiral Muston is steadfast in his belief that individual performance is informed by both competence and character. We'll find out how he helps instill these traits in his force and the challenges that come with it. Vice Admiral Muston has an extraordinary grasp on leadership philosophy, communicating effectively across large organizations and using his civilian experiences to inform strategy within his military career. And he is generous enough to share his insights with us around both organizational and personal high performance. We covered a lot of ground. In fact, we covered so much ground that we felt this conversation was best shared in two parts. So enjoy part one now and then make sure you come back for part two. With that, let's dive into this week's conversation with the very impressive Vice Admiral John Muston. Admiral, this is an honor. And I do not say that word lightly. And so thank you for being here. Thank you for in advance for bringing a generational type of insight and wisdom to this conversation. So I appreciate you. Well, I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be here. And as I mentioned, I've been a long-term listener or a long-time listener. So this is kind of a big moment for me too. Yeah, there we go. Okay, good. So we're both in it. All right. All right. Good. So let's start at the top. In your most succinct way, like what is the US Navy reserve? And why is it important for us to understand the operations that you're running? Great question. So the Navy reserves about 60,000 citizen sailors as we describe them. And we're an augmentation force that makes our Navy more capable and have greater capacity in the event of peace or war. So at its most basic level, we were born prior to the nation's entry into world war one. So in 1915, so we just celebrated our 108th anniversary. And in every significant conflict since then, the Navy reserve has augmented the active duty force for our nation. In World War Two, we had two million sailors that were reserved, that served in the Pacific and in the Atlantic. So the nation has come to expect that the Navy reserve is not only ready to perform but is qualified, certified and able to mobilize when ready. So the missions that we're doing around the world, you know, I've got people in every time zone in every area of responsibility, every combatant command area that are serving right now. I mean, they're around the world representing the interests of our nation. So in your organization, the reservist organization is civilian, are they civilians? Or like how does the bifurcation work between being a sailor versus being a civilian? Sure. So of my 60,000, 10,000 are active duty sailors whose job is to train and administer the reserve force. The other 50,000 are called selected reserves. And those are the folks that you may know by the old bumper sticker of a weekend a month and two weeks a year. So we say, okay, that sums to 38 days. And it really today does not need to be a weekend a month or two weeks a year. You know, that's that's the minimum requirement. You may want to do two weeks at one time and then do another two weeks and then not come in for a couple of months. As long as it sums to that 38 days, then you get what's called a good year. But what the short answer is 10,000. So roughly, you know, 15% or 16% of my folks are there all day every day. They are indistinguishable from an active duty sailor, but their focus and their job is to administer the reserve force. That number 10,000 to the 60,000. Okay. Is that thoughtful or was that that happened by accident? Oh, it's incredibly thoughtful. Okay. Pause the rest of the answer because I, one in five is where we've been working from. We found some research to be able to impact or create a critical mass across culture. We need at least one in five to be able to be like the heartbeat of what you're trying to create. And then I hear you say something very close to that like one in six. And I'm wondering if like I'm not being or being too ambitious with the 105. But tell me more about that. And if you agree with that idea that you need it like one in five to be able to create the heartbeat or one in six in your turn. You bet. And I don't want to make it sound too mathematical. So it's not that we have one out of every six in small units is. Yeah. But from a broad stroke. Exactly. Like, for instance, I've got 115 reserve centers. They're staffed by my active duty reserve sailors. So typically, staffs of between 11 and 40 and they are civilian and active duty reserve. Okay. And they manage a selected reserve population that could be up to 1500. So we do track that ratio very carefully. That will never be one in six. That's more like one in 30. But that's what we found to be managed well at the reserve center level. My staff at the Pentagon 55 all we call them training and administration of reserve are called tar. So all tar sailors. My reserve forces command on Norfolk, one of my echelon three commands for folks to know what that means. That's 100% tar staff as well. And and then scattered throughout my operational units. So again, of the 60,000, 30% we call operational units. Those are small boat units. Those are expeditionary medical facilities, cargo handling battalions, Navy seals. Those are also populated heavily with tar sailors because they need to be there every day. And they need to make sure that they're taking care of the training and the certification. The regiments, the equipment and things that you just can't do if you're showing up on the weekend. Okay. Do you think that one in five or one in six from a heartbeat to get to create change in a culture? Do you think that that's close? Does that intuitively feel right? It does intuitively. And just from an organizational behavior perspective, it sure does. The way I look at it though is I scrutinize every billet and every sailor across our force as part of a pretty rigorous and iterative billet is a specific job. Okay. So you scrutinize every every billet and every unit. Okay. Okay. So a unit is essentially company and the billet is the job. But I look at every one of those because part of my job is the chief of the reserve force is to augment or improve, optimize our force design, which is what is our capability and what's our capacity. So what do we do? And how much of it can we do? So I've made trades over the last three years where I've said there are some things that we are no longer going to do, but I will harvest those billets or units to build up additional capacity in the things that we know we must do. And that's been part of a pretty generational transformation, where we've said legacy functions that made a lot of sense in the global war on terror, post 9-11, which by the way, non-maritime. Okay. So we were providing support to joint force requirements in the deserts. That's not why the Navy exists. Right. So part of my chart, and what I came in was we're going to modernize the reserve force. And what that really means is review, audit, assess, determine what is the utility of every one of our sailors and what are they doing? And so in many cases, I said we know that we need more capability in Navy special warfare, our seal friends, the seal enablers. We need more there. That's a capacity and a capability that is in demand by our fleet commanders. I need more capability and space, space capability, cyber. Those are areas of growth for us. Expeditionary logistics. This is another one where if we're going to be drawn into conflict in the Indo-Pacific region in all likelihood, it's going to look a lot like it did in the war in the Pacific in World War II, picture Guadalcanal, island hopping campaigns. We've got great reserve capacity there. In fact, there are seven cargo handling battalions in the Navy, six of them are reserve force. So I'm saying maybe we need more. That could be something that would be tremendously in demand, and we should probably grow a capacity there. I'm going to pause the conversation here for just a few minutes to talk about our sponsors. Finding mastery is brought to you by levels. One of the most significant predictors of your lifespan, how long you live, and health span, the quality of those years, is your metabolic health. 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Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company, not available in certain states, and prices are subject to unwriting and health questions. And now back to the conversation. So capacity and capability, this is these two words I'm very familiar with from a sport, human development perspective. I'm not sure everyone, I'm not sure the community fully embraces those two, but so capacity and capability to work together, but they're very different. Absolutely. And when I think about capability, I think what are you capable of doing or what are we capable of doing? And that for me points to skill mostly. Yes, but what is it for you as well? Well, it's skill, but it's also training and qualification. Okay, right. And I would say those lead up to the the ability to be able to express the skill. Exactly. And then express the skill on demand under duress is like that's what I'm most interested in in high speed accurate environments. Exactly. Right. Okay. And then capacity means something different. And so how do you think about capacity? So capacity, you know, and again, the easy way is, okay, capability is what we do. Capacity is how much of it can we do? That's right. So, so we talk about watch teams, you know, essentially if you think of a football game, okay, you got your starting team. Well, if you're going to, if everybody gets hurt and you have to roll in with a second string, okay, that's the second team. The Navy operates around the clock around the world. And so typically the active duty manpower design accounts for daytime operations. But if we're drawn into conflict like we're seen in Europe right now, we're going 24 seven. So the reserve force comes in and we're watch sections two and three if you picture an eight-hour workday. So, so the capacity that we bring is the ability to supplement from daytime operations to 24 seven operations. How about that? Okay. So, so it's not like you're waiting around in a lounge like waiting for something like somebody like you're like in sweatpants training all the time. That's a terrible idea. But like it's not sure you that's not the visual that I have when I think of our training right. Yeah. So, so like there's a active readiness for two and three on on a 24 hour clock. Absolutely. Three segments. You are responsible for two and three readiness. Yes. So, if something strikes at 11 p.m. Europe, we would be on the watch floor already. On the watch floor already because you're already there. Okay. Now, that's even better. Okay. And you mentioned the what did you call it the Indo Pacific? Indo Pacific. Yeah. The area of the world. It's hot there now. It is. Yeah. And so, I think we're all watching and I'm not asking to say anything out of turn here. If something were to happen in that region, what would the picture look like from a global perspective about responding to that call? Well, globally for all of our services, it would be massive. And then I can get more granular about the Navy, but I can assure you something happened in the South China Sea or in the strait of Taiwan or in the East China Sea or the Philippines Sea. It would be massive on a scale that we haven't seen since World War II. And it would have global economic impacts before we even get into kinetic issues or collateral damage. I mean, you know, there are certainly scenarios where we see, depending on what exactly it is we're talking about, if it's gray zone conflict and Oh, gray zone, differentiated with that. So if we think of conflict as being binary or either in peace or war, what we find is that's never really the case. Have we always been in gray? Since since you've been alive, I've been alive. Mostly with the advent of cyber and social and other information warfare capabilities, which means it's below the threshold of armed conflict, but it's still conflict. Yeah, you know, we see intrusion on our networks every day. And so again, that that is not necessarily attributable. And even if it is, we're not going to go to war because of that. So we refer to that as gray zone where you say, you know, again, if peace is white and war is black, kind of we're operating in a gray zone in a lot of domains. Now, you know, we refer to domains as under the sea on the sea, over the sea, cyber space. Those are all referred to as domain. So so we recognize that again, that was fun. On the sea, on the sea, over the sea. And you're, you have that full stack. Yeah, you're the full stack. You bet. Yeah. And does each vertical in military operations have that full stack or the navy uniquely has that full stack? Each of the services has a component, a component to it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But the navy runs the vessels. Sure. So so we on the sea, you could be a surface warfare officer. So we're on the surface of the ocean. Interestingly, the army has boats, destroyers, carriers, leaders like your family name had a destroyer. Wouldn't that be interesting? That would be amazing. That would be that would be amazing if like your family. And what if there was two? Absolutely. Yeah, that would that would be something. What if there is one guy who had two named after him? Okay, I can't wait to go back to that to that part of story. Okay, so as a full stack, you're under the sea, on the sea, over the sea, which is air submarines ships, airplanes. Okay. And then cyber, right, and space and space. So satellites. And are you managing, are you managing responsibility capabilities and capacity across all of those? I am. Yeah. So you can't just like to differentiate when we say manage. So so I provide the forces. So I'm a service provider. So I make sure that we have the units, the billets, the people trained and certified so that the active duty commanders can task them. So I'm not an operational commander. Right. But but I am a service component that delivers people. Okay, this is, but this is why I wanted to speak to you. This at this very intersection about you have a service, your service is primarily people and scaling leadership, being able to cascade ideas to create a heartbeat where people see themselves in an important mission and they're an important part in it, or an important purpose. And they see themselves in that. That is challenging. That challenges the best of leaders. And so I don't know if you're working from like a model or you've been figuring out as you go and you've got a, you know, you got three or four generations of, is it four generations? Actually more than that, but yeah, four from the Naval Academy, four from the Naval Academy, generational, and maybe just walk us through that like it's great grandfather. Sure. So my great grandfather Henry was class of 1896. And his son, my grandfather Lloyd was class of 1932. And then his son, my father Henry, was a class of 55. And for good mother, for good measure, his brother Tom, my uncle was a class of 62. And then I was class of 90. But but if you go on my grandmother's side, then there were several others as well, but I won't complicate things. No. Yeah. So, so you, there's a bit of a baton passing, whether it's, I mean, I wonder how the DNA works here, but like there's a baton passing certainly of young dining room, breakfast table conversations that I would never have been exposed to, like that you and your family were getting early on. And so before we go to that part of it, though, how do you think about leadership at scale? And, and I don't want to, I don't want to taint it in any kind of way, and I don't want to even butcher it by saying leadership at scale. Right. So like how do you respond to that? Well, I think what you're getting at is an important topic, which, which I've always viewed as the more senior we get, you know, yes, we're still leaders, but the leadership requirements and demands change, you know, as a young officer, you're a leader from the first day to join the Navy, but you may be leading a division, and that may be 15 people. That's certainly different than being the commanding officer of a destroyer with 350 people, or being a strike group commander with 10,000 people, or being the chief of the reserve force, you know, with 60,000. And, and the Navy is pretty smart about this, and we invest in leadership training. So we've got what we refer to as our continuum of leadership training. So we give you essentially unit level training when you're young, and then you get to be a mid-grader field officer, you get additional different training, and then you get an executive level training, and then when you become a flag or a general officer, you get different training. I mean, I would tell you when I was a one-star admiral, the training was different than it was for a two-star admiral. And then as a three-star admiral, we're exposed to a really unique series of training opportunities that talk about organizational change and talk about large-scale dynamics. And, you know, basic things about, okay, not only establishing a vision, but how do you communicate it? And what do you do from the ground up versus from the top down? And, you know, are you inspiring and rallying people? Or are you holding people to the line? I mean, how do you cultivate your personal leadership style? You know, in my view, I always said it's hard to argue with results. And there have been occasions when I've said, hey, I tried this, and it was less effective than this other technique, which worked very well. And so, you know, the Navy in many ways is a large institution, all-total, active reserve over 400,000 folks. But we are very entrepreneurial as a service. So let's do that. Let's talk about some frameworks that make sense to you. And then I also want to double-click on the idea of like how to help create a vision and then cascade that vision. Because that's a super practical. And I'll tell you how I do it. Sure. Not the skill. Of course, you're doing it. But are there models that you think through that have been meaningful to you when it comes to leadership? There certainly are. I mean, there are some that we would look at as a problem-solving framework. I mean, we use something called Domeic. I don't know if you're familiar with Domeic. Yeah. So make sure I look that up. Well, and it's interesting that that this is something that we are investing heavily in training all levels of our teams. I mean, from the most senior person to the most junior person. And that framework is important to us because, again, as it relates to problem-solving, I just don't feel like we've got the time or the bandwidth to flail. We want to be ruthlessly efficient in addressing the root causes of problems in ways that is commonly understood. So in my case, what I tell people is here's how I want to take a brief. I have some basic expectations before we sit down to talk about an issue. And I want the problem statement to be explicitly stated because what I've learned over the years is, sometimes I get a 40-page PowerPoint deck that talks about all the reasons that the world is hard. And yet there's nothing actionable in there because they're trying to boil the ocean. Instead of saying, the root cause problem is the following. And there are 10 stakeholders involved. This is what is required to fix it. Here's where I need your help or I don't need your help, but I want you to know what we're doing. And after agreeing on the problem statement, like a lot of times we don't get past that first slide because I'll say, I don't think you put enough effort in the problem statement. And that is drilling down to the root cause. And not treating the surface symptoms, which it's easy for us to leap into activity and say, something broke, slapped some duct tape and bubble gum on it and declare victory. When, in fact, what we really need to do is think about, why did this happen and what was it systemically? In many cases, when we're talking about human beings, there's a degree of variability that we have to accept. But I always look at it as kind of the owner of the system to say, what could I have done differently to either train or enable the people to perform better? That's your central question. That's my question. I look in the mirror every day and say, okay, someone, it would be easy for someone to say this sailor did something stupid and we should throw the book at him. My first thought is, what could I have done differently that might have prevented the decision that that person made? And again, I just agree or I assume that no one wakes up saying today, I'm going to do dumb things. And I don't think people are the villain in their own story. Do you think people are fundamentally good? I do. You do. So that's refreshing for me to hear, because you and I have both seen people do some of the most absolutely, egregious, I'm even a loss for words, thinking about some of the things that I've experienced and seen and heard second hand that people are struggling with in both elite and performing environments as well as something different than that. So how do you come to that idea that people are fundamentally good? On one hand, I may be naively optimistic. On you are an optimist. I am absolutely. But I wake up and I think to myself, okay, today I get to make some decisions. One is, am I looking for the good in this day or am I looking to complain about all the things that are difficult in the day? And so the other thing that I realize is I've got a staff and I've got a team and they're looking at me. And if I come in and I am moping and grouchy and pissed, they're going to be too. Instead, I want to greet them every day with a sense of optimism like, hey, I don't care how hard this challenges that we're dealing with. We're going to figure it out and it's going to be awesome. And if you want to be a member of this elite high performing team, then that's the way you carry yourself and you work that down echelon with your folks too. So in order to participate, I'm pretty candid saying I only want high performers on my team. And granted in the Navy, sometimes we are forced because of timing and inventory issues. You don't always get to pick everybody that you work with. But my expectation is we're starting from an opening salvo where I say, welcome to the team. It's a pleasure to meet you and I greet everyone on my staff within the first week of their arrival and I sit down with them and say, okay, you're coming to work in my manpower shop. Thrilled to see you. Your reputation preceded you. I've read your biography. I got a couple of questions about where you live and what are your interests just so you know, you're relieving a person who was the best in this job that I've ever seen. And my expectation is you're going to be better than him. And if that doesn't sound good to you, then now's the time to mention it to me because I can find you another job. But my hope is that you're going to fit in and you're going to pick up that baton and run fast. And then honestly, everyone says, I can't wait to contribute sir. I mean, I've never had anyone go, you know what? I thought maybe I don't want to be here. So that's interesting. So that's a, so we've got a model that we were from support then challenge. Right. You're coming right out the gate with a challenge with a standard. Maybe it is. And then so how do you think about that idea of support then challenge? I like it very much. Yeah. In fact, I always, I describe this approach when I do meetings with my team when they're new, when we do kind of an indoctrination period. I'll say, here's what you can expect from me. I am going to envision, enable and encourage that. So envision enable encourage encourage. Yeah. So we're going to talk about what we want to actually hold on. I don't know. Where'd you because that is like that's something that I don't like the word enable for me personally. But the envision and encourage bit is so, so write down the center of how I've operated almost intuitively. I don't have a model for that. I mean, I made it up. So I will give it to you. No, I want you to use this. Great. But it feels for me right now hearing that from you. It's like I feel not validated. That's not the right word. But I feel like I've been doing this part right. You know, right. So I really appreciate that you're doing that way. So the envision and then the encouragement part, I really get and I want to hear how you think about enabling. Sure. So enabling is I'm going to give you the tools you need, the training, you know, what does that mean? Hey, in some cases, it's, it's the hardware. It's the connectivity. If you're going to be in the field, you need to be able to communicate. I mean, that's, that's a non trivial task. So, so the enabling piece is in order for you to do your job. I don't want you to say I had a million great ideas and I was ready to go, but the system didn't allow me to do what I wanted to do. So that's, that's the enabling part. Okay. Quick pause here to share some of the sponsors of this conversation. Finding Mastery is brought to you by AG1. 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As soon as you sponsor a job post, you'll get a short list of qualified candidates whose resumes on indeed match your job description. And then you can invite them to apply right away. Indeed knows that if you're growing your business, you got to make every dollar count. And that's why with indeed you only pay for quality applications that match your must have job requirements. Start hiring now with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at indeed.com slash finding mastery. Offer good for a limited time. Claim your $75 credit now at indeed.com slash finding mastery. Again, that's indeed.com slash finding mastery and support the show by saying you heard about it on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply need to hire you need indeed. Let's jump right back into the conversation. Okay. The encouragement can be problematic for me in my own head when it's not authentically sharp as well. Like I want so encourage is not like pat on the back encouragement for me also is what you can go a little further. You can you can go a little deeper. You know, you can stand your ground a little more clearly or kindly. Sure. Whatever. Like is there a sharp edge to. There is. Okay. But it's it's interesting. I don't think folks who work for me are going to say, oh my god, he's a tyrannical ass. Yeah. You know, I think most folks would say. Is that your appetite? No, no, no, it's going to be my doomstone. No, I think they're going to say I love working with him. I learned from him. It was a great tour. But I will tell you, I heard one of my subordinate commanders talking to his folks saying about me. He's got he's got great ideas and we need to get moving. He's also very impatient. And so so the sharp edge of it is, okay, we've agreed on what that vision is. Come back to me. The next the next discussion with us ought to be either I'm on it and it will be done by Friday or by June or whenever it may be or I need your help somewhere. But I don't need the daily updates with status. I mean, I trust you. I mean, the enabling piece is you got the tools you need, right? You need additional support, top cover, a Michelin communication, you know, where do you need me to roll in on your behalf? If not, then why isn't it done? There you go. And driving to closure is another thing that is a personal pet peeve for me. I say, you know, I just don't want to talk about things. I want to get them done and move on to the next. So closure to active, like to action. Yeah. Right. And then close the loop again. Is that part of, I mean, I like the Udalupe idea. Yeah. And so but that's a little bit different. And let's describe Udalupe. Yeah. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Yeah. And is that something you use? We all do. Is that closing the is that closing the loop? Yeah. I just mean if we say this is a policy document that needs to be signed by 20 people and we're targeting June, you know, I'm saying in May, how are we looking? Right. And don't come to me on the last day and say, I was off by 90 days and it's actually going to be in the fall, you know, how do you keep all of that organized? I have a phenomenal staff. This is where I, yeah. Me trying to keep everything intact was is like, it's a disaster. And you can hear laughter in the background. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a bit of a disaster. I have to, I have to admit, we're very fortunate in the military. And this is something that I do not see similarly in the civilian world. But I've got a lot of folks who, who are my enablers and some of them between a chief of staff and executive assistant and an aid and a flagwriter. They're there keeping the tickler list of the things that we talk about. And when we do a meeting with, or I call my division directors, essentially department heads and, and we go through, we do a, you know, sit down meeting. And as we're talking, I'm saying, that's great. How long is that going to take? Okay. You say it's a month. All right. I'm making a tickler to say, check in, you know, a month or a day 25. How are you looking on that month deadline that you committed to? Right. So, and again, some of these things that we're talking about when I deal in strategy and policy. So sometimes it's in three years, we want to see this movement, you know, which is different than saying, update me every week on that. I mean, I don't have the appetite or interest, frankly, unless something is off plan. Do you have a cadence to your meetings? Like every day, there's a thing and every week, there's a thing. Do you have some sort of cadence? With my own staff, I have standing meeting once a week. So we do a Wednesday morning session with the division directors. And how long is that? It's usually an hour. Okay. And then the, the offer is my door is open. And they shouldn't feel like they need to wait until Wednesday to talk to me. I mean, I'm kind of talking to them all day every day. And we're pretty fluent with technology. So whether that's on chat or some other mechanism, I said preference is not to deal in email. That is really not my preferred communication mechanism. Because I feel like for decades, we, as Americans, got sloppy and lazy about saying, well, I sent an email. My work is done. So two things about email. I say, not my preferred mechanism. You can come by and poke your head into my office any time, you know, face to face. I'll take that's a Trump card or call me on the phone. No one ever does, but I offer that. But I said, or I would prefer I am over email. And we've gotten pretty good now. This is relatively new within the Navy, but the Navy research leading the way here. We've been very encouraged by the behavioral change to use a collaboration suite. So another reason why I said, I don't want any attachments in email. You know, we can post them. We can work them in parallel. You know, we've got tools similar to what you probably use Google Docs. And I've just said, why get into version control issues with people emailing things. I said, let's just have one version of the truth. And we can all access it together. And when I'm done, you know, we have a workflow that says like, okay, when everyone's put their inputs and then I get mine and we're done, we save hundreds of man hours in the way that we're working. So yeah, good. Yeah. I've noticed the benefit. Of course. Yeah. And then when you go up to the envision part of the model, how do you help create a vision for people? Yeah. Like you're your direct report, your leaders, your heads, your departments? Well, I mean, there's a couple of layers to the answer. So as I mentioned, I deal in strategy and policy primarily. So, so the president writes a document called the national security strategy. And the secretary of defense writes a national defense strategy. And the chairman of the joint chief writes a national military strategy. And then the chief of naval operations, who's my boss writes the service component element of that we call the navigation plan. I read all those and then I get together with my staffs and say, here are the elements that I'm seeing where the reserves have either equity or potential capability. I think we should drive activity towards delivering against those things, knowing full well that it's nested with the demands of my boss and the chairman of the joint chiefs and the secretary of defense and the president. So, so that's kind of reserve force wide. I mean, it's it's easy for me to read those documents and then circle the wagons to say, here's what it means to us. That's different, though, than when you say, how do you keep your people motivated or established a vision? The vision that I want my staff to be aware of is I want to move fast, velocity is important to me. You know, when I talk about any problem that's brought to us where the recommendation is, I need more money, people or time. I say, we got to think harder about it once again, what's the problem statement and just a couple of tips and tricks that I look at when we're talking about problems in particular. One is, where are we now? Can we baseline our performance against what the standard is? You know, are we supposed to be at 85% and if so, where are we? Okay, well, if we're 82%, I see we got a problem or maybe we're 92%, 92%. Can we get to 100? You know, again, so we're meeting the standard. Who sets the standard? Well, the standards are usually in instructions or documents or things where, you know, maybe I sub the standard or but it could be, you know, in the same way that, you know, your PSA should be a certain level. You know, there are just some things that we know we need to be able to do for certifications or training. So first question, where are we relative to the standard? Because a lot of times people come in and say, we need to change this. I need more people. I need more money. I want to do something and I go, okay, well, first let me get a sense of the scale of the problem. Where are we now? The answer is not always, thanks for asking. It's measured very carefully and we know exactly, a lot of times it's, well, of course, we know we need to do this and go, okay, we'll show me. And then the second thing is, so what's the recommendation that you're making and how much better will the outcome be based on this recommendation? If we implement fully the change that you recommend, how much better will we be relative to our performance today? And then we say, okay, so you're telling me it's going to be an 8% lift on where we are? What's the cost in money, people in time to develop the change that you're describing? Ultimately what I'm getting at is, I want them to understand the quantitative rigor to assess whether is it worth it for us to do this. You know, I mean, I get 100 problems every day and sometimes I say, you're right, this is not perfect. It's number 20 on my top 10 list, though. I just don't have the time to dig into it. If you can affect the change, then more power to you. But the things that I want to sink my teeth into are the things that are going to give us 100% X return, you know, the ROI, like a portfolio manager. I want to move on the most impactful things because I, the other thing I recognize is, if it was easy, it wouldn't come to me. You know, it would have been done already. So I just, I walk in the door every day saying, I welcome the fact that everything that has brought to me is going to be complicated and unsolvable. And then we'll solve them. Do you, do the people that are bringing recommendations, do they come, do they come to their conclusions by committee, or do they come from small groups of people figuring it out, like two or three folks, or is it their discernment as an individual? Generally, well, the answer is all the above. And it has to do with authorities in our world. I mean, if for some of the very complicated problems we've got, it's multi-constituent, multi-stakeholder issues. So in those cases, you really need a working group. And we, I don't want consensus to be an excuse to not move. But, but at the same time, it would be disingenuous to say, well, I'm just going to solve this problem and then have five people screaming, like, what the heck? What did you just do? You know, I don't agree with it. So if it's something that is within the ownership of the individual, then I would expect the individual to solve it. If it's more complicated, then we'll bring in the appropriate folks. Okay. And so the consensus can be a problem. It can slow things down. That's why I'm asking about velocity. And at the same time, discernment alone can miss some of the other signatures that are really important here. Okay. So so when you're when you are trying to make the decisions of things that are complicated and hard, what capabilities do you want of your people to be able to present in the right way, which is clear and brief, is down to the root cause with action steps that they believe will help solve this. Forget it closer. Okay. And I love the reference point about where we are relative to the standard. I want to come back to that in a minute. But what capabilities do you believe are the most important for your people? And then we're going to complicate it one more level and project out five years from now. Because the world business and I'm imagining military operations and sport in general, we're going to be different in five years. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Generative AI, film, of course. Okay. Yeah. So what capabilities are you most interested in right now? You know, I studied operations research, operations analysis, as a master's degree, and I studied systems engineering undergrad. So so I've always been kind of a quant guy. So so the foundation for decision-making for me is typically born in data. And I certainly am a human. And so I have intuition. I try to mitigate the intuition with data. But I've also taken a lot of. That's an interesting framing. Yeah. Well, because it goes oftentimes, you know, I mean, we can all lie with statistics, right? I mean, I can. Oh, yeah. Exactly. I can take any data set and commit to you that it should be white. Nope. Same data. No, it should be. So so we want to be balanced. But but I like objective decision-making were possible. But what I found to is sometimes you don't have the luxury of all of the data. And and if it would be necessary for me to wait six more months to make a decision that was not a multi billion dollar strategic decision, I say, I don't want to debate in the boardroom. I'd rather try something now and then actually collect data on how it worked, you know, consider a pilot test. You know, this is kind of a lean startup approach. And and I'm fortunate enough to have people who are smart enough to understand what I mean and what we're trying to do when I say that. For instance, if it's something that we're trying to do with a training mechanism to get a boat crew certified, you know, okay, it's supposed to take 36 months. I go, would it be possible to do it in 18 months? You know, what would be required to make it happen in 18 months? Well, there's certainly an assumption about availability and people and funding and what does that look like? I get all that. Okay, that's that's fact. How do we assess the risk? If we implemented that, would people quit? Would it be too hard? You know, it's the operational tempo to rigorous. But but my hope would be that we're not saying, well, someone told me two years ago that we tried it and it didn't work. So we're never going to do it again. So anyway, that that's kind of the here and now piece. As it relates to what's going to happen over the next five years, there is no question that AI is going to transform the way that we access and act on information. We need to be really careful. All of us, the world needs to be really careful about the veracity of the information. I mean, you know that bots that are scraping the internet are scraping bad news and fake news as well as good news. So you have to be careful about kind of the sources. But but in terms of just pure mechanics, I mean, this is obviously on the order of the industrial resolution where, you know, we're going to free up a lot of time for people. And for every copyrighter or art director who's saying, this is travesty, I'm going to be out of a job. My first thought is the art directors who learn how to use AI to hone their craft are the ones that are going to be in demand. So, so why not leverage it? I mean, this is, you know, this is like the invention of the wheel and saying those who can harness it are going to be the standouts. And that will have applications in business and military and elsewhere. I mean, there's no question we'll see. Okay, so it would be fair to say understanding how to interpret data, understanding how to be blend intuition with objective data for discernment. That would be a skill. There's something about risk taking and acceptance of mistakes to be able to move with velocity and speed of the pilot test. And there's something about being stimulated by what's coming. So there's some sort of entrepreneurial mindset there. Like, I want to get ahead of it. I like it. I like what I'm seeing. I'm going to invest my time and energy, even if it's like not spec'd in my job. Yes. Right. So there's is that is that sound about right? It absolutely does. In fact, when I've described the approach that I've taken to affect this transformation, I mean, my tasking was to modernize the reserve force to transition us from the global war on terror from over two decades to prepare for what we refer to now is great power competition, great power, great power. So this is not the point. This is not state driven. Well, great powers are states. Okay. So peer and near-peer states. Yeah. Transitioning from Al-Qaeda, ISIS, violent extremism, that's global or on terror. Now we're saying Russia and China to some degree or on or near-peer both. Yeah. I would say, yeah, let's say near-peer. Yeah. One near-peer. So they're not listening by the way. But that you got an international audience. This is this is fair. Right. So so as we look at the driver, you know, I have said there's a sense of urgency here. You know, the race is on. Yeah. In any ways, I see similarities to the United States in 1939 to where we are right now. And I'm not chicken little and I'm not trying to scare people. But but I'm saying that the readiness of the reserve force is something that I need to solve today because if we need to break glass because of emergency in say 2027, I don't want then to start saying, how are we going to mobilize 50,000 people? Gee, we didn't think of this. You know, they're ready to go and do they know we're they know what building they're going to go to is their ID card work. I have access to the desk. I mean, those are things that I want to work on today. And now one final word from our sponsors. Finding mastery is brought to you by our very own finding your best course. 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Just head over to finding mastery.com slash course and enter the code finding mastery at checkout. Again, that's finding mastery.com slash course and enter the code finding mastery to receive $50 off the finding your best course. And with that, let's jump right back into this conversation. Like we're seeing some of the choke points from poor logistics and the operations that are taking place in Russia and Ukraine right now. Like absolutely. I didn't know this. This is obviously table stakes for you, but like logistics make and break. I mean, Napoleon. Yeah. Army fights on its stomach. Yeah, right. And I mean, we and every other country are watching Russia's performance and given them pretty low marks. But but we're also preparing for and we have we've done this for decades. I mean, we continue to pour effort into how do we maneuver like the United States? We're a forward deployed force. You know, and and having a forward deployed force is expensive. I mean, Navy, I always say, we are America's away team. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, we've got we've got ships in Yucusca, Japan and Sassebo, Japan and Bahrain and Rota, Spain and not only in Hawaii and in the continental United States and our fleet concentration areas. But, you know, we are in Singapore and, you know, we're everywhere that we know we would need to be to support our allies and partners and our national interests because the tyranny of distance has a time effect that we can't wait a week to get, you know, from Hawaii to Japan. We need to be there. And we talked to earlier about what's going on in the South China Sea. You know, it's a long way from San Diego or Hawaii. But it's closer to Korea and to Japan. And so in some respects, it surprises me that we're considering that war would be anything other than cyber or in space. It surprises me that we're moving or watching, you know, war happen on people's stomachs like or whatever that phrasing that you've mentioned. It surprises me that it's, it hasn't, I don't know, I always thought like when I was a kid that the wars that would be happening later would be like information-based cyber based something like that you would watch on Star Trek or Star Wars or something. Not that we might see that, but it would trend toward that. Is it trending that direction? Or do you think that it's more likely that we'll be in a war with bullets and, you know, ships and, you know, I think it will be bullets and ships, but it will certainly be supported by the capability that's resonant in space and in cyber. So I think the nation that controls cyberspace has a distinct advantage and AI factors into that. But having command of how the electrons are flowing really has a tremendous impact on everything from finding, fixing, tracking, targeting. I mean, all of those things now we do with computers. So what are some of the most interesting weapons that you've been exposed to or like a lot of different weapons on there? There are. I probably don't want to go into it on this podcast. I mean, there's. I mean, we've got things that go many times the speed of sound. You heard hypersonic weapons. I mean, you know, they are mind bogglingly fast. And so. And what do they do? They'll see their missiles. That's a missile. Yeah, it's a missile. But it, but it goes so fast. Like keep in mind, our missile defense systems are pretty impressive in that even to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles. What we do to defend is we shoot a missile at the incoming missile. So the hatch has to open. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like the exact precise. Of course, and cross, but then I say to put it into perspective, that's like you shooting a 22 caliber rifle at me and me saying, I'm going to shoot another bullet at it. You know, so, so the technology is easier that or golf. Yeah. Yeah. People brag about golf. I think so hard. Come on. Okay. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Do you have a preference for operations in in water or air or like where do you naturally lean? Like just perfect. Sure. Okay. Well, I'm a surface warfare officer. So, so I serve on ships. Yeah. And and small boats. And so being on the water is is kind of my trade. That said, you know, I own 150 airplanes as the chief of the Navy reserve. So, so we do all of the Navy's adversary missions. So we replicate. We do threat replication for deploying strike group airwings so that we replicate what our adversaries, how they might look. So you heard it like top gun, right? So so the folks that play the bad guys are our reserve squadrons. So the good news about that and the reason they get in the migs or whatever. And yeah, that's exactly. So I've got to have 16s. We've got F 18s. Got F five. What's what's the one that we're most like enamored by our ships? Our ships? Well, we just launched what we call a flight three guided missile destroyer. I mean, just just took ownership of it this week. So that is a that's a game changing capability. That's the equivalent of a new cruiser. So it's a destroyer hull, but it's got in the different screen of cruiser and a destroyer historically has been size cruiser is a little bigger than a destroyer. So this is a little bit bigger on the existing frame of the guided missile destroyer, but but it's probably the most capable warship in the world. But now that's a cool state. I mean, that's different than an aircraft carrier. You know, so this destroyer is about 10,000 tons and aircraft carriers 100,000 tons and an aircraft carrier carries an air wing and a destroyer carries missiles and guns. So so they have different functions complementary, but different. So anyway, when you say like, what's the coolest one? You know, my submarine brothers and sisters would say, well, don't forget about the submarines. They're pretty cool too. Those are pretty good. Quite down there. We fly, you know, my friend called the air boss, but the commander of the naval air forces. So we've got F-35s. They're pretty spectacular. You know, we've got lots of F-18s like you saw in Top Gun 2. So was there an uptick in enlistment or enrolling? In recruiting. Yeah. You know, it was rumored. So there was anecdotal feedback there. And there was similarly with Top Gun 1, the first one. And I think the facts don't bear it out, but it is a great talking point. I'd love to say there was, but I don't think it's for sure. Yeah, but yeah. In fact, how'd they do? As a movie, like how'd they do? Oh, they do great. In fact, you know, so the one of the advisors for the flight sequences was a Navy Reserve Captain Aviator. So Ferg, call sign Ferg, nice job Ferg. Anyway, so and lots of photos with him with Tom Cruise, you know, they say like shooting their watch. What does that mean? Like, you know, because you're shooting your watch. You're simulating what you're going to do with your hands, but anyway, but but I thought they did great. Now granted, my expectations for movies are probably different than some of my New York patients. It's hard to stream. It's hard to watch that. I mean, yeah, what I'm saying, I'm sitting there with my wife, Elbowing going, you know, okay, well, John Ham plays my friend in real life. Oh, that's right. And I'm saying, and by the way, you know, he would never say that. And she's going, okay, you and like five other people world. Exactly. All right, that's the end of part one. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and make sure to come back to check out part two where Vice Admiral Muston and I go into some dues and don'ts of personal high performance. And what it's like to lead and foster high performance teams, we also dig into the spotlights and shadows of generational legacies. You're going to love it. All right, thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday, punch over to findingmastery.com, slash newsletter to sign up. This show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendation seriously. 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Think well and keep exploring.