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

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

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podcast, episode number

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169 with Tom

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Libby. The First World War by John Keegan

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in three, two, one.

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this

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is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

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episode number 169.

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The author of our book today opens his

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seminal one volume history of the

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seminal war of the 20th century.

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And a war that fascinates me endlessly because of the

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dichotomies, disconnects and disruptions in leadership that

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it portends for all of us a hundred years

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later, he opens his book this way. And

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

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talking about books that circle around this book,

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and I quote, the First World

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War was a tragic and unnecessary

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conflict. Unnecessary because the train of events that led

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

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crisis that preceded the first clash of arms had

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prudence or common goodwill found voice.

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

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million human beings, tortured the emotional lives of

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millions more, destroyed the benevolent and optimistic culture of the

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European continent and left when the guns at last fell

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silent four years later, a legacy of political

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rancor and racial hatred so intense that

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no explanation of the causes of the Second World War can

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stand without reference to those roots.

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

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and incalculably more than costly and material terms,

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was the direct outcome of the 1st.

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On the 18th of September 1922, Adolf

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Hitler, the demobilized front fighter, threw down a

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challenge to defeat a Germany that he would realize 17

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years later. It cannot be that 2 million

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Germans should have fallen in vain. No, we do

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not pardon. We demand vengeance.

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Close quote.

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Today on the show, finally,

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after all this time, we are going to

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tackle the 25 year old volume.

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

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The First World War by John

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Keegan Leaders. The

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First World War was an absolute waste of blood

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and treasure among the fields, the marshes and the villages

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of what we would call pre modern Europe.

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And the postmodern world we now enjoy

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wouldn’t exist without that waste.

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

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in crime and in book

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

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

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

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happened. I’m,

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

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book. Interesting. I, I, I,

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

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So as usual, what we do with, with copyrighted

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works is we summarize ideas and we, we bring larger

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

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to do that today with the First World War

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

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

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published in 1998.

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

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book were published originally in

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Military History Quarterly and the Yale Reviews. You can actually

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go grab those online. Most of Military History Quarterly is

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

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

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Yale University Review Library. This book

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

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supporting documents. This book is

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almost 500 pages long. And so it is a

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comprehensive volume that covers everything

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

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associate with the assassination of the

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand by

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Serbian nationalist terrorists

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

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of 1914. Who moves all the way through

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to the armistice at the Treaty of

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Versailles in November of

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1918. The battle maps are quite

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amazing in this book. So it actually shows where

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the Eastern Front was, where the Western Front was,

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

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great job of showing the entirety of the

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empires that existed during the time of the World War

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I. So there was a British Empire with 400

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million people. The British Empire covered countries

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as from, from Canada all the way to Australia

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

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

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on British and German and French imperialism.

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

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on Sunday. Are they basing that on the redrawing of

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like, of boundary lines and. Okay.

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

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

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things that really strikes you is like Iraq didn’t

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exist as a country before World War I. Right.

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

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These countries were carved out of what was left of

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

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as the Ottoman Empire was called

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because the Turks made the

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wrong decision in aligning themselves with the

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Central Powers, aligning themselves with Germany and so when

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Germany lost the war or just stopped fighting, which is

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actually kind of closer to reality, the

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

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

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again, maps galore throughout this book, even

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

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Damarne and Somme and Verdun, but

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smaller battles that I had no understanding of,

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

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war or right after the crisis of 1914,

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

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in this book. Also, Keegan

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does a really good job of building military history into

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

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of this war. He does have quite a bit

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

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

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

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And of course, Joffrey

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for the French. He was a interesting, interesting

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gentleman. And Tsar Nicholas II who was

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running the war for the. For the Russians.

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

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

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about World War I. Hindenburg,

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the guy who eventually would capitulate

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17 years after the end of World War I

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to Hitler. Hindenburg

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

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won one of the demonstrative and defining battles on the

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Eastern front in World War I.

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

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

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later on in World War II started their careers,

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

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you know, all those guys, they all

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had a role ultimately

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

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

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Fitzgerald, interestingly enough, served

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underneath Harry Truman. He also. Or

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

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

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War I. Ernest Hemingway was an ambulance driver

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in World War I with the Italian Army. And

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

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generals were defined not by. Or General

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

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by actions on the field, but instead by the.

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They were defined by artists and others

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who had access to grind against people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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plans were based on this idea of mobilization,

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okay? And mobilization was

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described as the ability to use the

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new technology of the train and the new technology

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of rail to get troops

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to what would be a quote unquote, front right

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faster than the other party could get troops to

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the opposing, quote, unquote front right. And so

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Schliefland

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created a. A plan. And one of the things

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

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very briefly, he says this. All

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

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

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

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

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

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Plans conceived at leisure, pigeonholed and pulled out when

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eventuality became actuality.

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

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

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1830s. Soldiers rapidly grasped that

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railways would revolutionize war by making the improvement, the movement

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

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but almost equally rapidly grasped at such a movement would

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have to be meticulously planned. Then

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moving down railways needed to be timetabled quite as strictly

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

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soldiers learnt mobilization required lines designed to carry

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thousands of passengers monthly to move millions of troops within

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days. The writing of railway movement tables therefore became a

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vital peacetime task. And then the next quote. Staff

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

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

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elders, and as they went along, their practical

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mastery persuaded their competitors that expertise must

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

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

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and you had the systemization of learning that was occurring between

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the 1830s and the 1890s in Europe.

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And where the hammer fell the hardest on this, and

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Tom already brought this up. Where the hammer fell the

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hardest was in. Was in Germany. And

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Schliefflin’s plan was developed as a

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

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briefly fought in the 1840s between France and

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Germany and

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Schlieflin created a mobilization plan that required.

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

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timing, exactitude and had little room for

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error. And he did it at a war

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college without ever having to set foot on the

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grounds of war himself.

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

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

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

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

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he, he studied that stuff

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

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

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He could pinpoint failure points based on

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just logic. Right. Because of course hindsight is 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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into these war games and mostly allied

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countries and we have allied countries play the, the evil

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

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

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

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talks about is like is trying to

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use the past to have foresight into where you can

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visualize those mistakes before they happen. Now granted, Germany

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

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

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They did it better on the Eastern

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

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

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

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this first chapter or this first couple of chapters.

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Ambassadorship and diplomacy was great power

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

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We are, we’re in a weird historical moment

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111 years later that people back

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then who were diplomats and ambassadors would not recognize now.

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

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

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kid and thinking that like the ambassador to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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minute. What kind of secret handshake club did I

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join? Seriously? Exactly, exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ways that a normal civilian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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country, the likelihood of you getting to an American

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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fight over in Washington D.C. or wherever.

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Mostly Washington, D.C. and they are still

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positions that are delivered to.

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That are delivered to people as. Oh,

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gosh, they’re delivered to people as. As

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

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

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Democrat, doesn’t matter. No, this reminds

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

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

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

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ambassadors and prime ministers.

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And ambassadors, prime ministers and

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diplomats did not have.

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

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So they didn’t have a way to

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communicate quickly. Right. Or

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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But the, the diplomats and the ambassadors,

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they still operated as an aristocratic class.

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

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diplomacy were like the cousin of the Kaiser. Right.

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Or the, or the, or the,

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the brother in law of the Prime Minister. Right.

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That person was the one that got that ambassadorial role,

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

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okay, Mitt Romney’s brother

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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00:23:20,010 –> 00:23:23,780
example I’m using, I don’t know if that guy’s qualified to run,

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to go be the ambassador of Sweden. He’s

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probably not, but that’s, but it’s

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

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unqualified stranger who’s connected or even an unqualified kid

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

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

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

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

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And so you had diplomacy that was run basically on a

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summer schedule. People who were making war plans

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00:24:00,690 –> 00:24:04,410
and mobilization plans based on the new technology of the rail and the

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telegraph and the telephone. And then the third thing

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00:24:08,010 –> 00:24:11,730
here, and this is at the War College piece. And then the fourth thing here,

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

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

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00:24:20,110 –> 00:24:23,590
never be exaggerated. Paper plans do not determine

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00:24:23,590 –> 00:24:27,430
outcomes. The happenings set in motion by a particular scheme

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00:24:27,430 –> 00:24:31,230
of action will rarely be those narrowly intended, are

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intrinsically unpredictable, and will ramify far beyond the

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anticipation of the instigator.

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

387
00:24:42,420 –> 00:24:45,260
whole section reminded me of one quote from one.

388
00:24:47,020 –> 00:24:50,140
This. Obscure quote from an American boxer

389
00:24:50,940 –> 00:24:54,300
that said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

390
00:24:56,220 –> 00:24:59,380
That’s what it reminds me of. Like, because, because again, like you said, you could

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00:24:59,380 –> 00:25:03,060
put all the plans you want on paper, but until you actually start, listen, you

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00:25:03,060 –> 00:25:06,780
could have the best trained military in the world, and you’re going to say, I’m

393
00:25:06,780 –> 00:25:10,610
going to send one battalion in there because I know this

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00:25:10,610 –> 00:25:14,410
one battalion is going to beat up on their battalion, not understanding that that

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00:25:14,410 –> 00:25:18,210
battalion has the support of all the citizens in that, like. And now all

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00:25:18,210 –> 00:25:21,130
of a sudden, you’re not fighting one battalion, you’re fighting half a country because they,

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00:25:21,130 –> 00:25:24,690
like, they come out of the woodwork to defend their. Their land. Like, you

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00:25:24,690 –> 00:25:28,490
can’t. And you’re telling me that you can’t plan for that. Like, there’s no way

399
00:25:28,490 –> 00:25:31,530
to know what that group of people are going to be able to do or

400
00:25:31,530 –> 00:25:34,390
not do because they’re not military people that you can put on a piece of.

401
00:25:34,620 –> 00:25:37,900
Of paper and judge based on weaponry or

402
00:25:38,140 –> 00:25:41,900
training or whatever. Like, they’re. They’re a. They’re an X factor.

403
00:25:41,900 –> 00:25:45,540
Which is why, like, he was saying, like, none of this matters once you

404
00:25:45,540 –> 00:25:49,100
enact it, once you start, once you hit the go button, just like

405
00:25:49,100 –> 00:25:52,220
hell hits the fan. So

406
00:25:53,980 –> 00:25:57,620
Schliefen, speaking of him, he was a man without hobbies. All he liked doing was

407
00:25:57,620 –> 00:26:01,060
making paper plants. He had nothing. That was hilarious. He was the most

408
00:26:01,060 –> 00:26:04,540
boring guy on the planet. Even in his retirement, he was reading war books to

409
00:26:04,540 –> 00:26:06,680
his granddaughter. Know,

410
00:26:08,600 –> 00:26:12,400
he. He reminds me of the guy who. And you’ve known guys like

411
00:26:12,400 –> 00:26:15,520
this? I’ve known guys like this. It is. And sorry, ladies who are listening, it

412
00:26:15,520 –> 00:26:19,320
is guys. It is always guys. Guys are this obsessive. Women can’t get there

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00:26:19,320 –> 00:26:23,000
from here. They just can’t. I’ve never met a woman that obsesses about

414
00:26:23,000 –> 00:26:26,320
one thing the way a man does. Never met it yet. You haven’t met my

415
00:26:26,320 –> 00:26:30,000
wife when she talks about cleaning. My wife literally watches cleaning videos on

416
00:26:30,000 –> 00:26:33,600
Facebook for fun. Like, it. She’s obsessed. Okay, all right. That’s

417
00:26:33,600 –> 00:26:35,780
okay. Okay. So you might have me there,

418
00:26:37,220 –> 00:26:39,860
but. She’S the only one I know though, just, I’m just, just saying.

419
00:26:41,220 –> 00:26:45,020
But men will obsess about one thing to

420
00:26:45,020 –> 00:26:48,820
the point of them being, of them turning themselves into boring human

421
00:26:48,820 –> 00:26:52,580
beings about everything else. Yeah, like we were just talking about.

422
00:26:52,580 –> 00:26:55,500
We were just talking football before we, before we hit the record button on this

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00:26:55,500 –> 00:26:59,300
episode today. And we’re not going to talk about football today, kids. The folks, don’t

424
00:26:59,300 –> 00:27:02,960
worry about it, it’s fine. But, but like Tom Brady as a

425
00:27:02,960 –> 00:27:06,720
quarterback. No, not even that. Tom Brady as a human being

426
00:27:06,720 –> 00:27:10,440
has got to be the most boring human being on the planet. Gotta be. Because

427
00:27:10,440 –> 00:27:13,880
what else does the guy know? Didn’t know anything else. He has no other obsessions.

428
00:27:13,880 –> 00:27:17,600
He doesn’t care about anything else. He eats, sleeps, breathes football. If you try

429
00:27:17,600 –> 00:27:21,240
to get him to talk about anything else. Snow, for God’s sakes. The guy

430
00:27:21,240 –> 00:27:24,840
doesn’t, he doesn’t have an opinion about that. Can’t even think about it. He’ll tell

431
00:27:24,840 –> 00:27:28,040
you about the time in the snow game where they had to clear off a

432
00:27:28,040 –> 00:27:30,920
patch of grass for Adam Venateri to kick a field goal. He’ll tell you all

433
00:27:30,920 –> 00:27:34,720
about that snow game. That’s his

434
00:27:34,720 –> 00:27:36,400
depth of knowledge about snow.

435
00:27:39,120 –> 00:27:42,960
This is what I mean. And this was Schleepin sleeping was a guy

436
00:27:43,040 –> 00:27:46,600
who, who was so obsessed with

437
00:27:46,600 –> 00:27:49,040
warfare and war planning on paper

438
00:27:50,320 –> 00:27:53,760
and yet had no practical experience in this.

439
00:27:54,820 –> 00:27:58,660
And so when, when the practical as, as Keegan points

440
00:27:58,660 –> 00:28:02,500
out, when the, when the theory, at a certain point you have to go

441
00:28:02,500 –> 00:28:05,620
beyond theory, when the theory became actuality,

442
00:28:06,340 –> 00:28:10,019
events started moving. And I think of the great Jocko Willick

443
00:28:10,019 –> 00:28:13,860
quote the guy who wrote Extreme Ownership, the great Jocko Willa

444
00:28:13,860 –> 00:28:17,300
quote, the enemy gets a vote. Yeah, and that’s what,

445
00:28:18,340 –> 00:28:21,860
yeah, that’s what screws people up every friggin time.

446
00:28:22,020 –> 00:28:25,550
Because to your point, I’ll make plans all day

447
00:28:25,950 –> 00:28:29,470
or Mike Tyson, I absolutely, I’m going to make a plan to fight Mike

448
00:28:29,470 –> 00:28:33,070
Tyson. And yeah, it never survives

449
00:28:33,150 –> 00:28:36,710
first contact with Mike Tyson. We say this in business, a

450
00:28:36,710 –> 00:28:40,550
marketing plan never survives first contact with the customer. Like you could plan the

451
00:28:40,550 –> 00:28:44,270
greatest marketing plan for your product ever. And we work, work in another project

452
00:28:44,270 –> 00:28:47,550
where we do, we do that kind of work with, with startups.

453
00:28:48,110 –> 00:28:51,400
And the second your customer tells you something,

454
00:28:51,480 –> 00:28:55,320
that’s something totally that you did not anticipate or expect or behaves in

455
00:28:55,320 –> 00:28:58,920
a way that you did not anticipate or expect, there goes your plan. Now

456
00:28:58,920 –> 00:29:02,720
what most people do is what in marketing or in Fighting or

457
00:29:02,720 –> 00:29:06,440
in war planning. And in war planning, it has dangerous results,

458
00:29:06,440 –> 00:29:09,960
which is where the First World War came from. Most people don’t know

459
00:29:10,040 –> 00:29:13,880
how to abandon their plan. They

460
00:29:13,880 –> 00:29:17,580
don’t have the courage to let it go. And so I guess that’s

461
00:29:17,580 –> 00:29:21,060
the first question is like, what’s more, Is it, Is it current? Is it that

462
00:29:21,060 –> 00:29:24,540
they don’t have the courage to let it go? Or is it the ego taking

463
00:29:24,540 –> 00:29:27,420
over, saying that, I know I’m right, I’m just going to continue on because,

464
00:29:28,620 –> 00:29:31,180
well, I mean. Right. You know what I mean? Like, well, I mean, we talked

465
00:29:31,180 –> 00:29:34,620
about egos, we talked about eagles with why we don’t learn from history. Right? Yeah.

466
00:29:34,940 –> 00:29:38,660
World War I presents itself even in the

467
00:29:38,660 –> 00:29:42,150
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Right? The

468
00:29:42,150 –> 00:29:45,430
egos of the Serbian terrorists who were

469
00:29:45,430 –> 00:29:48,950
convinced that they would get their independence

470
00:29:49,670 –> 00:29:53,430
because they were nationalists. If they just killed this guy

471
00:29:54,550 –> 00:29:58,029
who was representative of the Habsburg Empire, by the way, the

472
00:29:58,029 –> 00:30:01,790
Habsburg Empire and the Austro Germany, or not Austro Germany, Austro

473
00:30:01,790 –> 00:30:05,630
Hungary Empire, all of that, we don’t even think about any of that stuff

474
00:30:05,630 –> 00:30:09,310
anymore because all those parts of Central Europe look totally different now. Talk about redrawing

475
00:30:09,310 –> 00:30:12,970
lines on maps. But the

476
00:30:12,970 –> 00:30:16,530
Serbians, the Bosnians, the Greeks,

477
00:30:16,850 –> 00:30:20,050
all of those countries, all of them were hyper

478
00:30:20,050 –> 00:30:23,330
nationalistic, which means they were almost exclusively

479
00:30:24,290 –> 00:30:27,410
driven and represented. And even

480
00:30:28,290 –> 00:30:31,970
they even had their positions of power filled by men who had

481
00:30:31,970 –> 00:30:35,690
egos as big as the kings and queens of the

482
00:30:35,690 –> 00:30:39,330
big empires of England and France and Russia and

483
00:30:39,330 –> 00:30:43,170
Germany. And they would take the Pepsi Challenge

484
00:30:43,250 –> 00:30:46,770
against anybody else’s ego on that continent. They were fine with that.

485
00:30:47,650 –> 00:30:48,530
And so

486
00:30:51,170 –> 00:30:53,410
egos, right, like, how do you.

487
00:30:55,570 –> 00:30:58,570
I do think it’s courage. I do think it’s courage to abandon a plan when

488
00:30:58,570 –> 00:31:01,170
it doesn’t. When your ego, when it doesn’t work.

489
00:31:03,410 –> 00:31:06,210
But in business, because this is a business podcast, too,

490
00:31:09,810 –> 00:31:13,650
how do you abandon that plan? Like, you put millions of dollars in there or

491
00:31:13,650 –> 00:31:17,490
hundreds of thousands, depending upon what level you’re at. And now the

492
00:31:17,570 –> 00:31:21,410
customer says, no, I don’t want this thing. My behavior

493
00:31:21,410 –> 00:31:22,530
says, I want this thing.

494
00:31:26,850 –> 00:31:30,370
People have no answer. People struggle with this massive business. People

495
00:31:30,370 –> 00:31:33,750
struggle massively with this because you can either fight the market,

496
00:31:34,790 –> 00:31:38,550
you can and not get anywhere, or not get

497
00:31:38,550 –> 00:31:42,190
to the places you want to go. You can go with the market, and then

498
00:31:42,190 –> 00:31:45,790
you can be seen internally as sort of being wishy washy after you did all

499
00:31:45,790 –> 00:31:49,190
this planning, or you can do nothing

500
00:31:49,590 –> 00:31:51,350
and then the market just runs over you.

501
00:31:57,350 –> 00:32:00,960
I mean, I think. I mean, I. It’s interesting that you,

502
00:32:00,960 –> 00:32:04,680
that you Say that because I, you know, again, in the, the demographic of

503
00:32:04,680 –> 00:32:08,000
businesses that I work with, in my consulting business is

504
00:32:08,400 –> 00:32:11,760
usually smaller than, than most consultants want to work with.

505
00:32:12,080 –> 00:32:15,759
I have no problem working with the, you know, a five million dollar a year

506
00:32:15,759 –> 00:32:19,200
company which to most consultants they’re not big enough to.

507
00:32:19,680 –> 00:32:23,200
They’re a spec, They’re a blip on a map, right. Of a specimen. One of

508
00:32:23,200 –> 00:32:26,570
the things that, that I think and I have

509
00:32:26,810 –> 00:32:29,210
conversations with them way before we

510
00:32:30,970 –> 00:32:34,810
transact any money or any money passes hands. And

511
00:32:34,810 –> 00:32:38,650
one of the first questions I asked them is how willing are you to pivot?

512
00:32:39,050 –> 00:32:42,730
And if their answer is even remotely too tight for me

513
00:32:43,050 –> 00:32:46,450
beyond my, then I don’t take them as a client. That’s really what dictates whether

514
00:32:46,450 –> 00:32:50,170
or not they’re a client for me is their

515
00:32:50,170 –> 00:32:52,010
intestinal fortitude of,

516
00:32:54,110 –> 00:32:57,550
of openness. Right. Like a willingness to, to look at

517
00:32:57,550 –> 00:33:01,270
actual analytical data. To

518
00:33:01,270 –> 00:33:04,990
your point, because a lot of times people will look in business and

519
00:33:05,310 –> 00:33:08,790
to your point where they go down a certain path and they’re not willing to

520
00:33:08,790 –> 00:33:12,310
leave that path. A lot of it is because whoever

521
00:33:12,310 –> 00:33:16,070
is leading them down that pathway, if

522
00:33:16,070 –> 00:33:19,780
they’re, if they’re asking them to change, they’re not giving them enough

523
00:33:19,780 –> 00:33:23,620
data, usually it’s because they’re not getting enough information. Now

524
00:33:23,620 –> 00:33:26,940
to your point about, hey listen, if I said to you, hey son, you’re running

525
00:33:26,940 –> 00:33:30,180
this company, I’m your marketing advisor and I say to you, hey listen, our customers

526
00:33:30,180 –> 00:33:33,660
are telling this, telling us this, we’ve got to change directions. And you go,

527
00:33:33,980 –> 00:33:37,580
no, that’s not enough to go by. We’re not changing directions. And that’s usually how

528
00:33:37,580 –> 00:33:41,180
it happens. But had I said to you, our customers are saying this,

529
00:33:41,420 –> 00:33:45,150
here’s where all the analytical data lies. Our, all this, all the numbers

530
00:33:45,150 –> 00:33:48,870
are saying that we’re in the, we’re on the wrong pathway. And all indications say

531
00:33:48,870 –> 00:33:52,230
that if we shift over to this new path, we’re going to gain traction here,

532
00:33:52,230 –> 00:33:55,910
here and here. And here’s why that now you’re, if you say no to

533
00:33:55,910 –> 00:33:59,550
that, by the way, as a, as your marketing consultant, I’m

534
00:33:59,550 –> 00:34:03,390
out. If you say like I’m going, okay, then you, you don’t need to pay

535
00:34:03,390 –> 00:34:06,670
me anymore. And by the way, I have literally said this to people. You are

536
00:34:06,670 –> 00:34:10,390
not taking my advice based on all the analytical data that I’m giving you.

537
00:34:10,890 –> 00:34:14,290
I’m not your guy. You want somebody that you want somebody to

538
00:34:14,290 –> 00:34:17,850
reinforce and double down on your area and your way

539
00:34:17,930 –> 00:34:21,650
and show you a pathway to success. Bullying

540
00:34:21,650 –> 00:34:25,210
yourself there instead of actually listening to. I’m not your guy. Right.

541
00:34:25,210 –> 00:34:28,650
So. So I step out, and I don’t want to take your money anymore because

542
00:34:28,650 –> 00:34:32,250
that’s the thing. You’re paying me for my expertise. You’re paying me to give you

543
00:34:32,250 –> 00:34:35,850
the advice. And the end of the. Not just advice,

544
00:34:35,850 –> 00:34:39,570
but you’re paying me to give you advice based on analytical data that

545
00:34:39,570 –> 00:34:42,490
I’m giving you. And if you’re not willing to do that, then I’m not your

546
00:34:42,490 –> 00:34:46,250
guy, so I’m out. And so the. And the thing in World War

547
00:34:46,250 –> 00:34:50,050
I was the diplomats had their own silo, the kings

548
00:34:50,050 –> 00:34:53,730
and queens had their own silo, the war colleges had their own

549
00:34:53,730 –> 00:34:57,330
silo. And even inside the war colleges, there was class

550
00:34:57,570 –> 00:35:01,410
stratification like nobody’s business, because this was

551
00:35:01,410 –> 00:35:05,030
a European war the Americans didn’t get into late. Woodrow Wilson

552
00:35:05,030 –> 00:35:08,230
infamously said, we’re too proud to fight. Whatever. Okay,

553
00:35:09,670 –> 00:35:13,110
okay. So it’s more like. It’s more like it didn’t impact

554
00:35:13,270 –> 00:35:17,110
us at all. At all. So why would we fight for something we had no.

555
00:35:17,110 –> 00:35:19,590
We had no. We had no skin in the game. Like, we had no. We

556
00:35:19,590 –> 00:35:22,030
had no dog in the fight, like. So why would we. Why would we fight

557
00:35:22,030 –> 00:35:24,150
in the first place? He was just being nice.

558
00:35:26,070 –> 00:35:29,310
I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. Exactly, Frank. Woodrow Wilson is nice. We’ll just leave that aside

559
00:35:29,310 –> 00:35:32,070
for just a minute. The comment was being nice. I didn’t say he was nice.

560
00:35:33,980 –> 00:35:37,700
But you had all this European stratification inside of an

561
00:35:37,700 –> 00:35:41,500
aristocratic worldview that said,

562
00:35:45,100 –> 00:35:48,380
even with the Enlightenment, even with the American Republic,

563
00:35:48,700 –> 00:35:52,420
even with the revolutions that had been fought, even. I

564
00:35:52,420 –> 00:35:55,020
mean, Europe had enjoyed a long

565
00:35:55,900 –> 00:35:58,460
19th century up to that point. Right.

566
00:35:59,750 –> 00:36:03,270
They had some systems post Napoleon,

567
00:36:03,750 –> 00:36:07,190
that sort of kind of in the middle of the 19th century kind of ameliorated

568
00:36:07,190 –> 00:36:10,550
some things. But they still had the Crimean War, they still had the Boer War,

569
00:36:10,550 –> 00:36:14,270
but those wars were far away in their colonies or in

570
00:36:14,270 –> 00:36:17,110
other countries that they didn’t care about. Right. And so

571
00:36:18,470 –> 00:36:22,150
the bifurcation of. And I loved how you use the term lack of

572
00:36:22,150 –> 00:36:25,910
data. Not only did they not have data

573
00:36:27,630 –> 00:36:31,070
in going forth on this war, they had an

574
00:36:31,150 –> 00:36:34,910
attitude. And Keegan nails this almost perfectly. They

575
00:36:34,910 –> 00:36:38,630
had an attitude where you, as a. If you would. If you

576
00:36:38,630 –> 00:36:42,190
could go back in time, Tom, outside of your own lifetime. Yeah.

577
00:36:42,350 –> 00:36:45,710
And talk to these people, not one of them would listen to you. And not

578
00:36:45,710 –> 00:36:49,350
because of your class status or because you’re an American or a

579
00:36:49,350 –> 00:36:52,750
weirdo at a time. Not because of any of those reasons. Although they would layer

580
00:36:52,750 –> 00:36:54,300
those in. They. You.

581
00:36:56,940 –> 00:37:00,420
They were playing a game where the rules involved their

582
00:37:00,420 –> 00:37:04,060
egos and not data. And I don’t think we’re

583
00:37:04,060 –> 00:37:07,820
any better on that now, even with all the

584
00:37:07,820 –> 00:37:09,340
data we have at our disposal.

585
00:37:11,660 –> 00:37:15,340
If you’re talking strictly in warfare, I agree. I, I

586
00:37:15,340 –> 00:37:19,100
think, well, in anywhere. Anywhere. I mean, business warfare. Anywhere, like I was

587
00:37:19,100 –> 00:37:22,700
saying, in business. And again, I do think that

588
00:37:22,700 –> 00:37:26,540
there, I think. I think there’s a split. I think there are people in

589
00:37:26,540 –> 00:37:30,260
business that will absolutely make judgments on data and will actually

590
00:37:30,260 –> 00:37:33,980
make business decisions based on the data that they’re seeing. I

591
00:37:33,980 –> 00:37:37,820
do think that that exists in business. In warfare, I don’t know so

592
00:37:37,820 –> 00:37:41,500
much. But the one thing, I think the other thing, too, that really

593
00:37:41,500 –> 00:37:44,900
comes into play, and I know you’re. I maybe want to talk.

594
00:37:45,060 –> 00:37:48,010
Maybe you want to wait until you ask the question, because I know there’s a

595
00:37:48,010 –> 00:37:50,410
question later that you’re going to ask about,

596
00:37:53,130 –> 00:37:56,810
about, you know, leading, about leading team. What we’re learning,

597
00:37:56,810 –> 00:38:00,210
like what the difference is learning between leading teams. And I don’t, I don’t remember

598
00:38:00,210 –> 00:38:03,850
how you phrased it, but the, the idea behind the. And what.

599
00:38:04,090 –> 00:38:07,610
I think one of the things that the Americans brought to that fight that

600
00:38:07,610 –> 00:38:11,130
surprised people and I still. And I think that, that leaders

601
00:38:11,210 –> 00:38:15,040
could learn from and still deploy today is,

602
00:38:15,120 –> 00:38:18,800
if you ever notice, it’s like a next man up syndrome or a next man

603
00:38:18,800 –> 00:38:22,440
up kind of mentality where the Germans weren’t ready for that. The

604
00:38:22,440 –> 00:38:26,200
Germans weren’t ready to kill a colonel or to kill a lieutenant in

605
00:38:26,200 –> 00:38:29,840
the field. And then the army keep coming at them because somebody else just took

606
00:38:29,840 –> 00:38:33,560
that lieutenant spot and they all in the. And the, the autonomy

607
00:38:33,560 –> 00:38:37,320
that happens in between, I think is another thing, right, where you basically say

608
00:38:37,320 –> 00:38:41,140
to, you know, you’ve got your generals down to the captain, down

609
00:38:41,140 –> 00:38:44,300
to the lieutenant, and by the time it hits the lieutenant, you’re like, listen,

610
00:38:45,020 –> 00:38:48,780
here’s the game plan. Your number one job is to take that hill,

611
00:38:49,660 –> 00:38:53,300
and number two job is to survive at any cost, Right? Like take the

612
00:38:53,300 –> 00:38:57,140
hill, survive. That’s in that order of importance, by the way. And all

613
00:38:57,140 –> 00:39:00,260
that stuff that happens in between, we don’t care. Like, just do what you just

614
00:39:00,260 –> 00:39:03,820
do those two things. We’re happy. And I think leaders in today’s business

615
00:39:04,620 –> 00:39:08,270
could learn from that. Where you can take a. Take a sales manager, for example,

616
00:39:08,270 –> 00:39:11,070
and say, here’s your quota. Hit your quota. I don’t care how it happens, just

617
00:39:11,070 –> 00:39:14,710
go do it. You have some autonomy to make decisions for your team.

618
00:39:14,790 –> 00:39:18,630
To hit that quota. And some of it is hiring and firing people, some of

619
00:39:18,630 –> 00:39:21,590
it is tactical things like how, whatever, but,

620
00:39:22,550 –> 00:39:26,070
but allowing that next man up to actually have some

621
00:39:26,070 –> 00:39:29,870
autonomy and have some skin in the game. That’s, I think, of something that came

622
00:39:29,870 –> 00:39:33,000
out of that conflict that we didn’t really have before.

623
00:39:33,560 –> 00:39:36,920
And even in, like, we talked a little bit about this on another

624
00:39:37,000 –> 00:39:40,600
episode of the podcast too. Even the, the

625
00:39:40,600 –> 00:39:43,960
US Military’s fight on the westward expansion of our own country.

626
00:39:44,360 –> 00:39:47,880
Yeah, they didn’t have a, they didn’t have autonomy in

627
00:39:47,960 –> 00:39:51,720
a sense of decision making power. They just had melees

628
00:39:51,720 –> 00:39:55,520
and like stuff that happened because individual people just kind

629
00:39:55,520 –> 00:39:59,200
of did what they wanted to do. That’s not the same thing as taking a

630
00:39:59,200 –> 00:40:02,960
military, like a military drive at something, say, go

631
00:40:02,960 –> 00:40:05,640
take that hill and then survive. Those are your two,

632
00:40:06,520 –> 00:40:10,240
your two, you know, goals in this, in this, in

633
00:40:10,240 –> 00:40:13,880
this endeavor and you know, take the hill under, under

634
00:40:13,880 –> 00:40:17,240
any circumstance, under any means necessary. Survive under any means

635
00:40:17,400 –> 00:40:20,760
necessary. So at the end of the day, when you do capture that hill and

636
00:40:20,760 –> 00:40:24,480
you lost 20% or 15% of your, your battalion

637
00:40:24,480 –> 00:40:28,110
or whatever or your league, and the general comes in and

638
00:40:28,110 –> 00:40:31,950
says, nice job, you took the hill. How did, how did, how

639
00:40:31,950 –> 00:40:35,350
did question two go? Or in. In. In.

640
00:40:36,630 –> 00:40:39,950
I can’t remember the term I was thinking of, but whatever. Like goal number two

641
00:40:39,950 –> 00:40:43,750
was to survive. We lost 15. Okay, how, how can we

642
00:40:43,750 –> 00:40:47,270
make sure that doesn’t happen again? Like there’s that, that the whole idea of debriefing

643
00:40:48,070 –> 00:40:50,710
with those two primary objectives in mind,

644
00:40:52,800 –> 00:40:56,600
the rest doesn’t matter. Right. And, and that wasn’t the case. When

645
00:40:56,600 –> 00:41:00,360
you look at all of the stuff that Schifflin and all those guys like the

646
00:41:00,360 –> 00:41:03,680
war, the war on paper, etc. Etc.

647
00:41:04,400 –> 00:41:07,840
There was never, there was never that clarity of

648
00:41:08,720 –> 00:41:12,160
this is your objective one objective. There was never a backup plan. There was never

649
00:41:12,160 –> 00:41:15,840
a secondary goal. Because if the secondary goal was to survive, then they would have

650
00:41:15,840 –> 00:41:19,170
known. You get to a certain point, if you can’t take the hill, you go

651
00:41:19,170 –> 00:41:22,650
to objective two, which is to survive, and we’re going to retreat and

652
00:41:22,650 –> 00:41:26,410
regroup before we make the next plan. Like there was, it was very little of

653
00:41:26,410 –> 00:41:30,090
that and they didn’t, they didn’t learn on the fly. Which is another thing

654
00:41:30,090 –> 00:41:33,850
that happens when you have that next man up syndrome or

655
00:41:33,850 –> 00:41:37,490
that next man up component that the, that the allied forces had.

656
00:41:38,370 –> 00:41:40,890
It doesn’t matter how many of them you knock down, there’s going to be somebody

657
00:41:40,890 –> 00:41:44,410
there to take the place of the leadership role. Like that they weren’t ready for

658
00:41:44,410 –> 00:41:48,120
that. And I think that’s, I think that’s the biggest thing. And again,

659
00:41:48,120 –> 00:41:51,920
I think, I think in today’s business society we have, we have a,

660
00:41:52,320 –> 00:41:55,760
if you have a similar mentality, your company is going to thrive

661
00:41:56,000 –> 00:41:59,440
in a better, at a better, in a better clip. It’s, you know, it’s not.

662
00:41:59,920 –> 00:42:03,720
And we see that with startups all the time. Hyun, right where startup founder

663
00:42:03,720 –> 00:42:06,880
thinks that they have to do everything themselves. They have, they have to have a

664
00:42:06,880 –> 00:42:10,440
hand in everything. And once they learn that delegating that stuff with clear

665
00:42:10,440 –> 00:42:14,250
objectives and then having them report back with successes and failures and

666
00:42:14,250 –> 00:42:17,210
then taking the analytics to make the next decision,

667
00:42:17,930 –> 00:42:21,490
it frees up the startup founder to, to

668
00:42:21,490 –> 00:42:25,170
really become that, that centerpiece

669
00:42:25,170 –> 00:42:28,850
and not, and not that. That you don’t have to be everything,

670
00:42:28,850 –> 00:42:32,570
you just have to be everything. Right? Right. Yeah. No, no,

671
00:42:32,570 –> 00:42:36,050
yeah, no, you’re exactly right. Well and you brought up a couple of points that

672
00:42:36,050 –> 00:42:39,460
I was, I was looking through in Keegan’s work here because there’s a couple of

673
00:42:39,460 –> 00:42:43,300
things that jump out, right, that support what you’re, what you’re saying here

674
00:42:44,020 –> 00:42:47,420
and will allow us to transition into our next point. So the

675
00:42:47,420 –> 00:42:51,220
generalship, right? Let’s talk about leadership. The leadership in World War I.

676
00:42:51,220 –> 00:42:54,179
The generals in World War I. Ha.

677
00:42:54,740 –> 00:42:57,940
Joffrey, Hindenburg,

678
00:42:59,460 –> 00:43:03,060
Ludendorff, even Brasilov in

679
00:43:03,300 –> 00:43:06,880
I believe in Russia. Em all

680
00:43:06,880 –> 00:43:09,520
Ataturk down in Turkey who later on

681
00:43:10,720 –> 00:43:14,360
would become the, the founder of

682
00:43:14,360 –> 00:43:17,280
the country of Turkey. Ataturk.

683
00:43:17,920 –> 00:43:21,280
Interesting guy. Even,

684
00:43:22,560 –> 00:43:26,120
even Winston Churchill who of course later on would become in Winston

685
00:43:26,120 –> 00:43:29,760
Churchill who, who, who really pushed

686
00:43:29,760 –> 00:43:33,450
for. Well, you know, he really pushed for the battle in the,

687
00:43:33,610 –> 00:43:36,970
in the Dardanelles. In the Dardanelles straight at Gallipoli which,

688
00:43:37,130 –> 00:43:40,730
the, by the way, the battle at Gallipoli. I, I had, I had never

689
00:43:40,730 –> 00:43:44,410
fully appreciated just how much of a unmitigated

690
00:43:44,570 –> 00:43:47,810
slaughter that was. And that’s the thing that, the other thing that jumps out to

691
00:43:47,810 –> 00:43:51,050
you about World War I. And so I want to read about General Ship a

692
00:43:51,050 –> 00:43:53,610
little bit here and I want to talk about the Somme,

693
00:43:55,210 –> 00:43:57,930
because the Somme was one of the worst battles on the Western Front

694
00:43:59,420 –> 00:44:03,100
in, in the year of battles. In.

695
00:44:04,860 –> 00:44:08,300
Well, the, in the year of battles. So I’m going to read about this holocaust

696
00:44:11,500 –> 00:44:15,220
and it starts of course with generalship. So General Haig, right.

697
00:44:15,220 –> 00:44:18,860
Douglas Haig. Right. Of the. Who was leading the, the British

698
00:44:18,860 –> 00:44:22,220
Expeditionary Force, by the way. People people

699
00:44:22,300 –> 00:44:25,800
misunder misunderstand this. The British army, the British

700
00:44:25,800 –> 00:44:29,640
Expeditionary Force, while hardened in Colonial battles

701
00:44:30,680 –> 00:44:34,520
was always second to the British Navy. And this is just sort of how it

702
00:44:34,520 –> 00:44:38,240
works, right? In certain. In certain countries we would see this, saw this in

703
00:44:38,240 –> 00:44:41,840
World War II, where, interestingly

704
00:44:41,840 –> 00:44:45,320
enough, the Air Force, as a discrete

705
00:44:45,320 –> 00:44:49,000
service, had to really fight to get out

706
00:44:49,000 –> 00:44:52,630
from underneath the auspices of the army and

707
00:44:52,630 –> 00:44:56,470
even the auspices of the Navy in the Pacific, like the Air Force, had to

708
00:44:56,470 –> 00:44:59,910
fight to become a discrete service and still has a chip on its shoulder to

709
00:44:59,910 –> 00:45:03,550
this day about being a discrete service in the. In the

710
00:45:03,550 –> 00:45:07,030
US Military. So Haig

711
00:45:07,830 –> 00:45:11,230
ran the. The British Expeditionary

712
00:45:11,230 –> 00:45:14,310
Force in. In World War I.

713
00:45:15,030 –> 00:45:18,750
And Keegan says this about

714
00:45:18,750 –> 00:45:22,310
Haig, and it’s interesting when he describes the personalities of these men.

715
00:45:22,900 –> 00:45:25,220
He says this, and I quote, Haig,

716
00:45:26,340 –> 00:45:29,860
whom his contemporaries found difficult to know, has become

717
00:45:29,860 –> 00:45:33,660
today an enigma. The successful generals of the

718
00:45:33,660 –> 00:45:37,340
First World War, those who did not crack outright or decline

719
00:45:37,340 –> 00:45:41,100
gradually into pessimism, were a hard lot as they had to be

720
00:45:41,100 –> 00:45:43,700
with the casualty figures accumulating on their desks.

721
00:45:44,660 –> 00:45:48,420
Some nevertheless managed to combine toughness of mind with. With

722
00:45:48,420 –> 00:45:51,740
some other striking human characteristic. Joffrey,

723
00:45:52,140 –> 00:45:54,380
that was the leader of the French.

724
00:45:56,140 –> 00:45:59,900
Imperturbability, Hindenburg, gravity,

725
00:46:00,300 –> 00:46:03,340
folk fire, Khamel, certainty.

726
00:46:03,660 –> 00:46:06,940
Haig, in whose public matter and private diaries

727
00:46:07,580 –> 00:46:10,860
no concern for human suffering was or is

728
00:46:10,860 –> 00:46:14,580
discernible, compensated for his aloofness with nothing

729
00:46:14,580 –> 00:46:18,340
whatsoever of. And I love this term because this is

730
00:46:18,340 –> 00:46:21,660
so English, nothing whatsoever of the common touch.

731
00:46:24,540 –> 00:46:27,100
Such. You can tell Keegan’s an English historian.

732
00:46:29,340 –> 00:46:31,900
Just a little this little things an American would never say.

733
00:46:35,180 –> 00:46:38,580
And back to the book. He seemed to move through the horrors of the First

734
00:46:38,580 –> 00:46:42,420
World War as if guided by some inner voice speaking of a higher

735
00:46:42,420 –> 00:46:46,140
purpose and a personal destiny that we now know was not

736
00:46:46,140 –> 00:46:49,820
just appearance. Haig was a devotee of both spiritualistic

737
00:46:49,820 –> 00:46:53,660
practices and a fundamentalist religion. As a young officer,

738
00:46:53,660 –> 00:46:57,420
he had taken to attending seances where a medium put

739
00:46:57,420 –> 00:47:01,020
him in touch with Napoleon. As commander in chief, he fell under the

740
00:47:01,020 –> 00:47:04,860
influence of a Presbyterian chaplain whose sermons confirmed

741
00:47:04,860 –> 00:47:08,500
him in his belief that he was in direct communication with God

742
00:47:08,580 –> 00:47:11,830
and had a major part to play in a divine plan for the world. Closed

743
00:47:11,830 –> 00:47:14,670
clip that was the general

744
00:47:15,470 –> 00:47:19,150
that was head of all the commander in chief of all the British Expeditionary

745
00:47:19,150 –> 00:47:22,510
Forces at the Psalm. That guy

746
00:47:25,390 –> 00:47:28,270
in 1916. That guy.

747
00:47:29,710 –> 00:47:32,790
Now I’m not going to go into the whole entire battle of the Somme. You

748
00:47:32,790 –> 00:47:35,990
can read the whole thing. You can read how the Germans

749
00:47:35,990 –> 00:47:38,780
responded to the British moving forward. Forward.

750
00:47:39,580 –> 00:47:43,300
The Psalm is a muddy field. It is.

751
00:47:43,300 –> 00:47:46,860
It is a muddy field. And the Germans, by the way, held the high ground.

752
00:47:47,180 –> 00:47:50,060
And they held the high ground for the entire war. Talk about

753
00:47:51,260 –> 00:47:54,860
to Tom’s point earlier, going up the hill and grab it. You know,

754
00:47:55,500 –> 00:47:58,780
they weren’t given autonomy, the British soldiers were not given autonomy

755
00:47:59,500 –> 00:48:03,300
and the British infantry did not have tanks at this point of the war. This

756
00:48:03,300 –> 00:48:06,900
was a year too early. And

757
00:48:06,900 –> 00:48:10,380
the, the Battle of the Somme dragged on through the

758
00:48:10,380 –> 00:48:14,180
summer, through that summer, in, in, in 1916.

759
00:48:15,220 –> 00:48:17,300
And. Well,

760
00:48:20,100 –> 00:48:23,900
Keegan wraps up his analysis of the SOB with this

761
00:48:23,900 –> 00:48:27,700
line. By the 19th of

762
00:48:27,700 –> 00:48:31,060
November, when the Allied offensive was brought officially to a halt,

763
00:48:31,510 –> 00:48:34,710
the furthest line of advance at Le Boeufs lay only

764
00:48:35,270 –> 00:48:38,070
seven miles forward of the front line of attack

765
00:48:38,790 –> 00:48:42,470
on the 1st of July. Now you want to know how many men they lost

766
00:48:42,470 –> 00:48:45,830
to get 7 miles? This will make you sick.

767
00:48:46,470 –> 00:48:50,030
The Germans may have. We don’t have clear numbers even

768
00:48:50,030 –> 00:48:52,870
now. The Germans may have lost over

769
00:48:53,110 –> 00:48:56,750
600,000 killed and wounded in their effort to keep their solemn

770
00:48:56,750 –> 00:49:00,470
positions. The Allies had certainly lost

771
00:49:00,470 –> 00:49:03,750
over 600,000. The French casualty figure being

772
00:49:03,990 –> 00:49:07,750
194,451. The British

773
00:49:07,830 –> 00:49:10,710
419,654.

774
00:49:11,830 –> 00:49:15,630
The Holocaust of the Somme was subsumed for the French in that

775
00:49:15,630 –> 00:49:19,270
of Verdun. To the British, it was and

776
00:49:19,270 –> 00:49:22,870
would remain their greatest military tragedy of the

777
00:49:22,870 –> 00:49:26,120
20th century, indeed of their national

778
00:49:26,520 –> 00:49:30,240
military history. Then it

779
00:49:30,240 –> 00:49:34,080
goes down. There is nothing more poignant in British life than to visit the ribbon

780
00:49:34,080 –> 00:49:37,616
of ceremony of cemeteries that marks the front line of 1

781
00:49:37,717 –> 00:49:41,520
July 1916, and to find on a gravestone after gravestone

782
00:49:41,520 –> 00:49:45,320
the fresh wreath, the face of a pal or a chum above a

783
00:49:45,320 –> 00:49:48,680
khaki surge collar staring gravely back from a dim photograph,

784
00:49:48,920 –> 00:49:52,670
the pinned poppy and the inscription to quote a father,

785
00:49:52,670 –> 00:49:56,150
a grandfather and a great grandfather, close quote. The

786
00:49:56,150 –> 00:49:59,950
psalm marked the end of an age of vital optimism in British

787
00:49:59,950 –> 00:50:03,670
life that has never been recovered. And Keegan was

788
00:50:03,670 –> 00:50:04,870
writing this in 1998.

789
00:50:07,830 –> 00:50:11,470
By the way you add up those figures, what that means at

790
00:50:11,470 –> 00:50:15,190
the psalm is that probably close to 1.2

791
00:50:15,190 –> 00:50:18,840
million men died in one field, in one

792
00:50:18,840 –> 00:50:22,240
battle. That,

793
00:50:25,600 –> 00:50:29,120
and there’s no other way for me to frame this is piss poor

794
00:50:29,120 –> 00:50:32,719
leadership. That’s, that’s

795
00:50:32,719 –> 00:50:35,120
homicidal leadership. Yeah.

796
00:50:36,400 –> 00:50:39,600
And I don’t care how much you think you’re in touch with God.

797
00:50:41,520 –> 00:50:44,310
And I, I say this as a Christian. I don’t say how. I don’t care

798
00:50:44,310 –> 00:50:47,310
how much in touch a guy God you think you are. I don’t care how

799
00:50:47,310 –> 00:50:50,910
many seances you go to and call up Napoleon.

800
00:50:52,190 –> 00:50:55,470
I don’t care how class conscious you are and lack the common touch

801
00:51:00,190 –> 00:51:03,750
to allow that to happen on your watch. For your part, the French do what

802
00:51:03,750 –> 00:51:06,510
they do, the Germans do what they do, but on your part,

803
00:51:07,390 –> 00:51:09,310
you’re responsible for a third of that.

804
00:51:11,280 –> 00:51:14,520
I will frame it this way. After I read that, I wouldn’t have wanted to

805
00:51:14,520 –> 00:51:18,080
be the soul, because I do think people have souls. I wouldn’t have wanted to

806
00:51:18,080 –> 00:51:21,200
be the soul of Douglas Hag when he showed up at wherever it is he

807
00:51:21,200 –> 00:51:25,040
showed up at. I wouldn’t want

808
00:51:25,040 –> 00:51:28,000
to be that guy because that’s a lot of explaining to do.

809
00:51:28,720 –> 00:51:29,440
That’s a lot.

810
00:51:34,640 –> 00:51:38,210
I read that for 7 miles you expended

811
00:51:38,210 –> 00:51:42,010
1.5 million people for 7 miles.

812
00:51:43,210 –> 00:51:46,890
And still didn’t take the actual hill. Right, right,

813
00:51:47,530 –> 00:51:50,890
right. You did not actually achieve the objective. I mean,

814
00:51:51,290 –> 00:51:54,930
I, I, I, I don’t know the com, the comparative numbers, but

815
00:51:54,930 –> 00:51:58,610
I’m thinking, like, think, think of that same thing. We, I don’t know,

816
00:51:58,610 –> 00:52:01,210
I don’t think the numbers are going to be the same, but think of like

817
00:52:02,010 –> 00:52:05,820
Normandy or Iwo Jima. Yeah, like Iwo Jima.

818
00:52:05,820 –> 00:52:08,580
We took the hill. That was the reference point that I was using in that

819
00:52:08,660 –> 00:52:12,060
for that and that. This is, by the way, folks, this is World War II,

820
00:52:12,060 –> 00:52:15,740
not World War I, but. Right, but I would imagine the numbers of

821
00:52:15,740 –> 00:52:18,660
loss are going to be high.

822
00:52:19,220 –> 00:52:23,020
Yeah, I don’t know if they’re that high. I don’t, I mean, even Normandy,

823
00:52:23,020 –> 00:52:26,780
where we knew we were walking into. Yeah, we knew,

824
00:52:26,780 –> 00:52:30,380
we actually knew going in that we were going to lose a good portion of

825
00:52:30,380 –> 00:52:34,140
people, of men in that, in that battle. We knew going in, but we

826
00:52:34,140 –> 00:52:37,940
also knew that if we took that beach that, that was going to basically

827
00:52:37,940 –> 00:52:41,540
spearhead the remaining part of the, the, the,

828
00:52:41,620 –> 00:52:45,420
the defense inland. Right? So like, we, we had to have

829
00:52:45,420 –> 00:52:48,460
it and that, that’s kind of what I was, you know, under any means necessary,

830
00:52:48,460 –> 00:52:52,300
you take the hill or you take the beach. But you know, objective

831
00:52:52,300 –> 00:52:55,660
number two is to survive it so that we can actually hold it after the

832
00:52:55,660 –> 00:52:58,820
fact that, Right. You know, there’s, there’s purpose behind

833
00:52:59,510 –> 00:53:03,350
objective number two. But I don’t know, I don’t

834
00:53:03,350 –> 00:53:05,990
know what the, I don’t know what the orders were in the psalm. Like that

835
00:53:06,070 –> 00:53:09,430
doesn’t make something there, There’s a disconnect, right? Like that’s the,

836
00:53:10,310 –> 00:53:12,230
the Battle of Normandy resulted in

837
00:53:12,230 –> 00:53:15,950
approximately226,386 Allied

838
00:53:15,950 –> 00:53:19,190
casualties and around240,000 German

839
00:53:19,190 –> 00:53:22,390
casualties with an additional20,000 French,

840
00:53:22,870 –> 00:53:26,720
French civilian deaths. But actually killed

841
00:53:26,720 –> 00:53:30,200
on that day, not just in the whole battle, but actually killed on that day

842
00:53:30,200 –> 00:53:33,880
was around 72,000Americans and actually killed on

843
00:53:33,880 –> 00:53:36,880
D Day. On the day of the actual invasion itself

844
00:53:37,760 –> 00:53:40,639
was 25,000. 2500, yeah.

845
00:53:40,639 –> 00:53:44,400
2,500Americans and 4,414 total

846
00:53:44,400 –> 00:53:48,200
Allied troops, with approximately 153,000

847
00:53:48,200 –> 00:53:51,880
wounded. Significantly lower numbers in World War I.

848
00:53:51,880 –> 00:53:55,390
But still, to your point, we actually got on the

849
00:53:55,390 –> 00:53:58,990
beach. Right, right, right. And that’s the thing.

850
00:53:58,990 –> 00:54:02,830
Like, Hague at the Somme is

851
00:54:02,830 –> 00:54:06,550
probably the worst, but you have Hindenburg in.

852
00:54:06,950 –> 00:54:10,550
In the Western. On the Western Front and Ludendorff on the

853
00:54:10,550 –> 00:54:13,950
Western Front. Then you had the French at

854
00:54:13,950 –> 00:54:17,270
Verdun under Folk and Joffrey.

855
00:54:17,510 –> 00:54:21,280
Those guys. The generalship,

856
00:54:21,280 –> 00:54:23,960
the piss poor generalship in World War I

857
00:54:26,360 –> 00:54:29,800
is just kind of stunning. And when you read these numbers, and

858
00:54:29,960 –> 00:54:33,520
consistently when I read these numbers in Keegan’s wonderfully

859
00:54:33,520 –> 00:54:35,080
written, wonderfully written book,

860
00:54:37,560 –> 00:54:41,400
I. The thing that came back to me was,

861
00:54:41,400 –> 00:54:45,120
this makes no sense. This makes no sense. This makes no

862
00:54:45,120 –> 00:54:48,750
sense. This makes no sense. Why are we exp. Bending men?

863
00:54:50,030 –> 00:54:52,190
And maybe this is something I don’t understand, but

864
00:54:55,790 –> 00:54:59,510
the men didn’t understand why they were walking seven miles into

865
00:54:59,510 –> 00:55:01,790
barbed wire and machine guns.

866
00:55:03,149 –> 00:55:06,630
Like, at a certain point, the Germans would. And this was in battle, after

867
00:55:06,630 –> 00:55:09,990
battle, the Germans would stop firing the machine

868
00:55:09,990 –> 00:55:13,350
guns because the. The British

869
00:55:13,350 –> 00:55:17,190
troops or the French troops who were advancing

870
00:55:17,190 –> 00:55:21,030
would get caught in the barbed wire that hadn’t been broken by the bombardments. By

871
00:55:21,030 –> 00:55:24,470
the way, the numbers of tons of material. They’re still finding

872
00:55:24,470 –> 00:55:28,110
material in Europe from the battle, like from battles in World War

873
00:55:28,110 –> 00:55:31,950
I. Millions of tons of rounds, millions

874
00:55:32,110 –> 00:55:35,870
dropped on barbed wire. And because the way the

875
00:55:35,870 –> 00:55:39,710
Germans burrowed and trenched into the side of the mountains

876
00:55:40,380 –> 00:55:44,180
and into the side of the grounds at the Somme, and particularly at Verdun, where

877
00:55:44,180 –> 00:55:47,820
the chalky soil was where they could just literally embed like,

878
00:55:47,900 –> 00:55:50,980
like wasps nests. They could just embed and stay in there, and then they come

879
00:55:50,980 –> 00:55:54,780
out and shoot you and just go right back in. Plus, there was

880
00:55:54,780 –> 00:55:58,500
no. There was no bombers. Like, that wasn’t a

881
00:55:58,500 –> 00:56:01,660
concept that really, like, existed until World War II,

882
00:56:02,540 –> 00:56:06,220
which prevented a lot of trench warfare, World War II, from occurring. Because now you

883
00:56:06,220 –> 00:56:09,580
could bomb from the sky, right, which totally obliterates all of that.

884
00:56:10,240 –> 00:56:14,000
But the tons of material you had expended and then

885
00:56:14,000 –> 00:56:17,760
the tons of men you had expanded. The Germans would literally watch the British

886
00:56:17,760 –> 00:56:21,560
walk across no Man’s Land after they had shot off their. All of their

887
00:56:21,560 –> 00:56:24,240
cartridges, and then they just stopped firing and let Them just let them go back

888
00:56:24,240 –> 00:56:27,920
and carry their. Why are we. Why are we executing people now? It was

889
00:56:27,920 –> 00:56:30,880
literally a firing spot that you’re sending guys into.

890
00:56:31,520 –> 00:56:35,240
And to be a general. And I get

891
00:56:35,240 –> 00:56:38,560
it, you’re at the back, you’re having three meals a day,

892
00:56:39,360 –> 00:56:43,040
you’re talking with some prime minister. You’re managing

893
00:56:43,040 –> 00:56:46,720
the war. Telegraph lines of communication,

894
00:56:46,720 –> 00:56:50,320
which were a new thing that were being put down at the time,

895
00:56:50,800 –> 00:56:54,520
were cut by bombardments. So you would literally send out a message in

896
00:56:54,520 –> 00:56:58,200
the morning. You would get maybe one message in the middle of the battle, in

897
00:56:58,200 –> 00:57:02,000
the afternoon, and then you wouldn’t find out about the outcome of the battle until

898
00:57:02,000 –> 00:57:05,850
the next day. In some cases, if you’re a general in the rear

899
00:57:05,850 –> 00:57:09,650
with the gear. Unlike the wars of the

900
00:57:09,650 –> 00:57:13,410
early 18th of the early 19th century, where, and

901
00:57:13,410 –> 00:57:16,650
Keegan even mentions this at, at

902
00:57:16,650 –> 00:57:20,250
Waterloo, Wellington actually rode out with his

903
00:57:20,250 –> 00:57:23,890
men. Like, he rode out. He saw Napoleon. He’s like, oh, yeah, that’s

904
00:57:23,890 –> 00:57:27,530
Napoleon. Yeah, I got you. Mfer you that right there.

905
00:57:28,650 –> 00:57:32,160
I could see the whites of his eyes. Hank never did that.

906
00:57:32,320 –> 00:57:36,040
Hank didn’t go out to the front. That was not a concept

907
00:57:36,040 –> 00:57:39,360
for them because, again, they were aristocratic Europeans.

908
00:57:39,760 –> 00:57:43,480
He didn’t have the common touch. He wasn’t going to be dealing with the hoi

909
00:57:43,480 –> 00:57:46,799
polloi and the people. And he was just fine

910
00:57:47,200 –> 00:57:50,640
with ex. With just executing people in order to achieve

911
00:57:50,880 –> 00:57:54,560
some objective that wasn’t going to get a. That he didn’t even know hadn’t

912
00:57:54,560 –> 00:57:58,310
been. He didn’t even know hadn’t been achieved because

913
00:57:58,310 –> 00:58:01,710
the telegraph lines were cut. Because the main thing wasn’t

914
00:58:01,710 –> 00:58:04,790
communication. The main thing was, well, just go out there and

915
00:58:05,350 –> 00:58:09,190
figure it out, maybe, or do actually figure out. Go

916
00:58:09,190 –> 00:58:12,950
out there and do what you’re told. March to those lines. If you get

917
00:58:12,950 –> 00:58:15,990
caught in the barbed wire, well, it will be a glorious sacrifice for the British

918
00:58:15,990 –> 00:58:18,870
Empire. And there were people willing to do that.

919
00:58:20,070 –> 00:58:23,510
Hell, on both sides. On the German side, on the French side, on the. On

920
00:58:23,800 –> 00:58:27,160
English, their work. And this is a mindset we can’t comprehend.

921
00:58:28,040 –> 00:58:30,920
No, we just can’t comprehend. It’s like I said this to a buddy of mine

922
00:58:30,920 –> 00:58:34,480
who went to Iraq and was. Was a driver in

923
00:58:34,480 –> 00:58:37,720
Iraq for a couple of different tours. And I’ve said this to other buddies who

924
00:58:37,720 –> 00:58:41,560
went to Iraq and Afghanistan. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, I think we lost

925
00:58:41,560 –> 00:58:45,160
in America 8,000 people total

926
00:58:45,320 –> 00:58:49,160
over the course of 20 years. We lost our minds as a country.

927
00:58:51,390 –> 00:58:54,830
We haven’t lost our minds like that since Vietnam, where we lost 50,000 people

928
00:58:55,390 –> 00:58:56,830
in like 17 years.

929
00:58:59,070 –> 00:59:02,350
Numbers that a World War I general would be

930
00:59:02,670 –> 00:59:06,270
peachy keen with, or even. A World War II general,

931
00:59:06,270 –> 00:59:09,950
apparently. Well, and that’s where. Right, and

932
00:59:09,950 –> 00:59:12,750
that’s where we say they’re made of different stuff. They were made of different stuff.

933
00:59:12,750 –> 00:59:16,400
Because now the generals you have. Now this is why we’re all talking about

934
00:59:16,400 –> 00:59:20,240
drone warfare and sending robots to go fight for us. We don’t want to

935
00:59:20,240 –> 00:59:24,040
expend any men at all. And I don’t know how you do war

936
00:59:24,040 –> 00:59:27,040
without expending men. I don’t know how you do the war between the robots, because

937
00:59:27,040 –> 00:59:30,000
eventually they’ll wake up and be like, oh, we can just have our own war.

938
00:59:30,000 –> 00:59:32,480
We don’t need human beings. Like, why don’t we just go shoot the human beings?

939
00:59:32,480 –> 00:59:35,960
That’s my concern about that. Don’t give a drone too much

940
00:59:35,960 –> 00:59:39,720
autonomy. That’s going to be a wrong problem. Not for the drone, for you,

941
00:59:41,910 –> 00:59:45,430
but exactly.

942
00:59:45,670 –> 00:59:49,470
But World War I, how do you. So this is

943
00:59:49,470 –> 00:59:51,550
a question, and it didn’t really have it written down, but this is a question

944
00:59:51,550 –> 00:59:55,030
that jumps out of this. What do you do when the leader doesn’t

945
00:59:55,750 –> 00:59:59,590
care? When the people have no clue what the vision is

946
00:59:59,990 –> 01:00:03,830
and the leader is so removed he can’t explain

947
01:00:03,830 –> 01:00:07,590
it? I think of these

948
01:00:07,590 –> 01:00:11,210
CEOs, of these companies that have 50,000 employees, like Mark

949
01:00:11,210 –> 01:00:14,490
Zuckerberg has no idea what’s happening in the front line of his company.

950
01:00:14,890 –> 01:00:18,570
He has no clue. He can’t. Or, or if

951
01:00:18,570 –> 01:00:22,010
he does have a clue, he would be the most unique CEO

952
01:00:23,690 –> 01:00:27,450
ever by far. Yeah. And I don’t think he is.

953
01:00:28,970 –> 01:00:32,530
Well, I mean, or David Ellison or, or

954
01:00:32,530 –> 01:00:35,450
Larry Ellison or any of these guys running these big companies.

955
01:00:36,090 –> 01:00:39,870
What’s his name, Nadella over at Microsoft? Any of those guys, I don’t

956
01:00:39,870 –> 01:00:42,790
think any of them are unique. I think they’re more like World War I generals

957
01:00:42,790 –> 01:00:46,430
than we want to, than we want to admit. Yeah. And I, I don’t, I

958
01:00:46,430 –> 01:00:49,870
don’t disagree with you. And, and I think it’s interesting. That was the whole

959
01:00:50,030 –> 01:00:53,790
crux of the. Quite a few years ago.

960
01:00:53,950 –> 01:00:57,470
You remember the show Undercover Boss?

961
01:00:57,630 –> 01:01:01,350
Oh, yeah, yeah. And what an eye openening experience it

962
01:01:01,350 –> 01:01:04,790
was for every one of those, especially season one, by the way, because after season

963
01:01:04,790 –> 01:01:08,140
one, everybody knew what the hell you were doing. So it wasn’t really. Which I

964
01:01:08,140 –> 01:01:11,860
knew first for certain. That show had a very short shelf life

965
01:01:11,860 –> 01:01:15,100
because, yeah, you know, there’s only so many times you’re going to trick people that

966
01:01:15,100 –> 01:01:18,860
are actually watching these show anyway. But the point, first season in

967
01:01:18,860 –> 01:01:22,340
my opinion was very real. It was very like when these,

968
01:01:22,580 –> 01:01:26,260
or at least it seemed it maybe I’m just saying. But

969
01:01:26,260 –> 01:01:30,020
when these CEOs of these bigger companies, like companies like Waste Management and

970
01:01:30,100 –> 01:01:33,540
whatever, like they go undercover and they go on the front lines and they

971
01:01:33,540 –> 01:01:36,900
realize what they’re asking those frontline people to do

972
01:01:37,220 –> 01:01:41,060
for the money that they make and they’re like this, this can’t,

973
01:01:41,060 –> 01:01:44,140
this can’t go on like this. We can’t do this. Like it was very eye

974
01:01:44,140 –> 01:01:47,700
openening for them, which I don’t see Mark Zuckerberg ever.

975
01:01:50,020 –> 01:01:53,780
Bezos is probably a better example, right? Because I don’t know what, I don’t know

976
01:01:53,780 –> 01:01:57,540
what the front line of Zuckerberg’s enterprise does, but I do know the front

977
01:01:57,540 –> 01:02:01,260
line of Jeff Bezos group are some of those delivery drivers that are

978
01:02:01,260 –> 01:02:04,940
getting dirt for pay, working their knuckles to,

979
01:02:04,940 –> 01:02:08,540
you know, knuckles to the bone day in, day out, six, seven days a

980
01:02:08,540 –> 01:02:12,220
week. And they’re making barely enough money to live. You ask Jeff

981
01:02:12,220 –> 01:02:14,940
Bezos to go do that job and see what he thinks. But you know what?

982
01:02:14,940 –> 01:02:18,660
He won’t. There’s no way he would. There’s no way he would. No. And,

983
01:02:18,660 –> 01:02:22,060
and, and he may, he may be bereft of religion. I have no idea what

984
01:02:22,060 –> 01:02:24,900
his religious beliefs are, but the, the

985
01:02:24,980 –> 01:02:28,620
attitude. So, so we could read about a guy like Hank,

986
01:02:28,620 –> 01:02:31,140
right? And I picked him because he was the most. And I picked the song

987
01:02:31,140 –> 01:02:34,660
because it’s just the most egregious example out of a whole pile of

988
01:02:34,660 –> 01:02:38,420
atrocious examples, right? Don’t get me started on what happened

989
01:02:38,420 –> 01:02:42,260
in Russia and the nonsense with their. Oh my God, please, they,

990
01:02:42,900 –> 01:02:46,300
they got the Lenin that they deserved. And I’m not talking about the Beatles guy

991
01:02:46,300 –> 01:02:47,700
either. So

992
01:02:50,830 –> 01:02:54,030
that attitude, that posture of,

993
01:02:55,630 –> 01:02:59,310
and well, as Keegan said, not having the common touch, not

994
01:02:59,310 –> 01:03:00,670
being able to put aside

995
01:03:03,230 –> 01:03:06,590
ego or class consciousness or whatever the hell

996
01:03:07,710 –> 01:03:11,150
to get out of your little box, your little office

997
01:03:12,110 –> 01:03:15,710
and to your point, get in the delivery drivers

998
01:03:16,310 –> 01:03:20,110
vehicle and do that job for 12 hours a

999
01:03:20,110 –> 01:03:23,910
day, every day. Like Bezos didn’t even start doing

1000
01:03:23,910 –> 01:03:27,590
that job. Like he, you know, he, he and I,

1001
01:03:27,910 –> 01:03:30,790
I’m old enough to remember when Jeff Bezos had hair. So is Tom.

1002
01:03:33,030 –> 01:03:36,070
I remember that guy before he was Lex Luthor. And

1003
01:03:37,430 –> 01:03:41,110
he, he never had the common touch. He was always an

1004
01:03:41,110 –> 01:03:44,870
aristocrat. He always has had an aristocratic attitude, for God’s sakes.

1005
01:03:44,870 –> 01:03:48,190
The man was a finance major in college. Like you don’t go into

1006
01:03:48,830 –> 01:03:52,510
those kinds of, that kind of role because you really like

1007
01:03:52,510 –> 01:03:56,230
human beings because you have the like, because you

1008
01:03:56,230 –> 01:03:59,750
have empathy for people as people, right? Because you don’t want to waste human

1009
01:03:59,750 –> 01:04:03,590
capital. You go into that, into that realm. And by

1010
01:04:03,590 –> 01:04:07,270
the way, all my finance people, I’m not knocking all of you. I’m merely saying

1011
01:04:07,270 –> 01:04:11,070
about the attitude in there. Yes, there’s different attitudes among finance

1012
01:04:11,070 –> 01:04:14,870
folks. I understand that. And because two things can

1013
01:04:14,870 –> 01:04:18,510
be true at once, the vast majority of finance folks I work

1014
01:04:18,510 –> 01:04:22,110
with or have engaged with over the course of my career have been

1015
01:04:22,110 –> 01:04:25,830
folks who really want to take a human being and turn it into a one

1016
01:04:25,830 –> 01:04:29,670
or a zero or put a dollar sign behind it. And

1017
01:04:29,670 –> 01:04:33,070
if you can’t, if they can’t do that, they are confused by the question.

1018
01:04:35,230 –> 01:04:38,590
And that is a failure of leadership as a leader. You can’t be

1019
01:04:38,590 –> 01:04:41,950
confused by the human elements of the question. You could disagree with them,

1020
01:04:42,410 –> 01:04:45,690
you can fundamentally dislike them, whatever,

1021
01:04:46,090 –> 01:04:49,890
but you have to. You have to have it. You have

1022
01:04:49,890 –> 01:04:53,370
to tear. Why do boards. Why do boards. I’ve often,

1023
01:04:53,530 –> 01:04:57,210
I’ve often questioned this, and I’ve never asked this question of anybody else, ever.

1024
01:04:57,210 –> 01:05:00,970
Hasan. Yeah. You’re the first person to get this question. But I’m curious

1025
01:05:00,970 –> 01:05:04,570
to your opinion about this, because I think you would know before most or

1026
01:05:05,050 –> 01:05:07,370
people that I know anyway. Most people that I know.

1027
01:05:08,900 –> 01:05:12,260
Why then do board of directors of big companies often look at the

1028
01:05:12,260 –> 01:05:16,060
CFO as the natural successor to the

1029
01:05:16,060 –> 01:05:19,820
CEO? That makes no sense

1030
01:05:19,820 –> 01:05:23,460
to me, but happens all the time. Because boards of

1031
01:05:23,460 –> 01:05:27,100
directors are fundamentally uncomfortable with the

1032
01:05:27,100 –> 01:05:30,380
idea of a founder that cares about. Not even a founder, a CEO that cares

1033
01:05:30,380 –> 01:05:34,180
about people. Because they don’t believe fundamentally,

1034
01:05:35,270 –> 01:05:38,990
as business people themselves, that they can do business and have feelings

1035
01:05:38,990 –> 01:05:42,590
at the same time. They believe that those. They believe those two things are an

1036
01:05:42,590 –> 01:05:46,230
anathema to each other and that they wouldn’t be able to make. I remember the

1037
01:05:46,230 –> 01:05:49,950
line from. It’s. This is actually directly from Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman

1038
01:05:49,950 –> 01:05:53,470
when he went researched this back in the 1970s. He said that when he would

1039
01:05:53,470 –> 01:05:56,950
talk to CEOs about being more human and more emotionally intelligent,

1040
01:05:57,350 –> 01:06:01,150
they would say, I can’t be emotionally intelligent because it

1041
01:06:01,150 –> 01:06:04,870
will prevent me from being able to make the, quote, unquote, hard decisions that business

1042
01:06:04,870 –> 01:06:08,720
requires. That’s a bunch of hogwash and you

1043
01:06:08,720 –> 01:06:12,520
know it. I know it’s hogwash, but you have to take what people’s words are.

1044
01:06:12,520 –> 01:06:16,240
Right? Okay, so if I take you on your words, if I actually seriously believe

1045
01:06:16,240 –> 01:06:19,400
you, then you’re closer to Doug Haig

1046
01:06:19,960 –> 01:06:23,720
sending out boy after boy after boy after boy in the psalm

1047
01:06:24,200 –> 01:06:27,640
for a useless objective, then you are,

1048
01:06:28,600 –> 01:06:31,960
then you are close to Mother Teresa trying to save people,

1049
01:06:32,570 –> 01:06:35,210
you know, from an, from a convent in India.

1050
01:06:36,170 –> 01:06:39,210
Yeah, because you think that Mother Teresa’s weak

1051
01:06:40,570 –> 01:06:44,210
and you think that Doug Hag is strong. They must, they, they must

1052
01:06:44,210 –> 01:06:47,450
all hate guys like Richard Branson then, right? Like Richard Branson

1053
01:06:47,450 –> 01:06:51,170
philosophy about businesses. If, listen, when, when you, he

1054
01:06:51,170 –> 01:06:54,690
was asked in an interview once, like, you know, shouldn’t you,

1055
01:06:54,690 –> 01:06:58,010
shouldn’t the, you know, the customer is always right? Right. Like, shouldn’t you worry about

1056
01:06:58,010 –> 01:07:01,610
the customer more than anybody else, blah, blah, blah. And he said, no. If I

1057
01:07:01,610 –> 01:07:05,410
treat my frontline employees like they matter more than anything else,

1058
01:07:05,410 –> 01:07:08,970
if I treat my frontline employees like their family and I’m going to treat them

1059
01:07:08,970 –> 01:07:12,530
with the utmost respect and then they naturally will take care of my

1060
01:07:12,530 –> 01:07:16,290
client, my customers, if they’re happy, if they’re, if

1061
01:07:16,290 –> 01:07:20,050
they’re, if they’re, if they’re experiencing a positive work environment. They

1062
01:07:20,050 –> 01:07:23,810
are, they are just naturally going to provide my customers

1063
01:07:23,810 –> 01:07:27,610
with a good experience. And now I’m not saying he was right 100% of the

1064
01:07:27,610 –> 01:07:31,370
time. I’m sure there are still disgruntled employees, whatever. I get that. But

1065
01:07:31,370 –> 01:07:34,810
at least his mental thought process had more to do with

1066
01:07:35,210 –> 01:07:38,490
treating the boys going into battle

1067
01:07:39,370 –> 01:07:42,890
better than most of the people that we’re thinking of today. And by the way,

1068
01:07:42,890 –> 01:07:45,810
he was a multi, he was a billionaire multibillionaire. He’s not like, it’s not like

1069
01:07:45,810 –> 01:07:49,610
he. Yeah, but, you know, but you’ll get that guy. Okay, so you’ll

1070
01:07:49,610 –> 01:07:53,130
get Richard Branson on a stage, right? You’ve seen, you’ve seen this.

1071
01:07:53,370 –> 01:07:57,180
You’ll get Richard Branson on a stage with Jeff

1072
01:07:57,180 –> 01:07:59,540
Bezos and Jamie Dimon.

1073
01:08:01,300 –> 01:08:04,940
And the moderator will ask this august

1074
01:08:04,940 –> 01:08:08,260
panel of brilliant wealthy

1075
01:08:08,260 –> 01:08:12,100
entrepreneurs who have succeeded how they treat their

1076
01:08:12,100 –> 01:08:15,860
people. They will give the three answers that, you know,

1077
01:08:15,860 –> 01:08:19,540
those three people would give, and then they will

1078
01:08:19,540 –> 01:08:23,080
walk off the stage and not talk to each other at all.

1079
01:08:23,720 –> 01:08:24,760
Yeah, yeah.

1080
01:08:28,760 –> 01:08:32,560
And, and, and, or, or, or even worse. And this is

1081
01:08:32,560 –> 01:08:36,160
what I think most of us on the bottom of these hierarchies think

1082
01:08:36,160 –> 01:08:39,320
actually happens. They’ll give the answer,

1083
01:08:40,360 –> 01:08:43,840
they’ll have the collapse, they’ll walk off the stage. This is where the

1084
01:08:43,840 –> 01:08:47,400
modern, the postmodern cynicism comes as an outgrowth of World War I

1085
01:08:47,480 –> 01:08:51,180
and World War II and Vietnam. They’ll walk

1086
01:08:51,180 –> 01:08:54,980
off the stage and what we all imagine is they’re all high fiving

1087
01:08:54,980 –> 01:08:58,300
about how they’ve like fooled the Hoi polloi one more time.

1088
01:08:58,700 –> 01:09:02,460
Yeah, that’s what we all imagine. And I think

1089
01:09:02,460 –> 01:09:05,900
it’s probably closer to the first example, the first

1090
01:09:05,900 –> 01:09:09,700
outcome, than the second one. I don’t think Jamie Dimon knows how

1091
01:09:09,700 –> 01:09:13,460
to talk to a guy like Richard Branson because I think it’s so far out

1092
01:09:13,460 –> 01:09:17,150
of his wheelhouse, he just. It’s easier to get into his

1093
01:09:17,150 –> 01:09:20,510
chauffeured car and just drive home or to his

1094
01:09:20,510 –> 01:09:23,910
mistress’s house or whatever the hell he does. It’s easy.

1095
01:09:23,910 –> 01:09:27,710
Whatever, like, whatever. It’s easier for Bezos to go on

1096
01:09:27,710 –> 01:09:31,510
his yacht with Lauren Sanchez and whatever. With whatever he’s

1097
01:09:31,510 –> 01:09:35,350
doing with her. It’s easier for Richard Branson to go buy another island

1098
01:09:35,670 –> 01:09:39,310
instead of some ayahuasca retreat for Aaron Rodgers. It’s

1099
01:09:39,310 –> 01:09:42,710
just easier to do those things. Because here’s the thing.

1100
01:09:43,910 –> 01:09:47,750
Haig and Joffrey and Foch and Ludendorff During

1101
01:09:47,750 –> 01:09:51,470
World War I, those World War I generals all understood

1102
01:09:51,470 –> 01:09:55,030
aristocracy and hierarchy in a way that I don’t think we

1103
01:09:55,030 –> 01:09:58,710
get, that we don’t appreciate. And I think the reason why I’m drawing a

1104
01:09:58,710 –> 01:10:01,950
parallel between them and the CEOs that we have now is because I think the

1105
01:10:01,950 –> 01:10:05,790
CEOs get hierarchy and class in a way that we don’t

1106
01:10:05,790 –> 01:10:08,710
get. Things have become more democratized and

1107
01:10:08,710 –> 01:10:12,180
egalitarian among the people below that

1108
01:10:12,180 –> 01:10:15,940
rank. But among the people above that rank, things have gotten

1109
01:10:15,940 –> 01:10:19,500
tighter and tighter as wealth has increased. Things have gotten tighter and

1110
01:10:19,500 –> 01:10:22,780
tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter where they are

1111
01:10:22,780 –> 01:10:26,260
closer to those World War Generals in attitude.

1112
01:10:27,940 –> 01:10:31,180
Maybe not in the ability to command people, but in

1113
01:10:31,180 –> 01:10:34,860
attitude. They’re closer to that. That’s why Jeff Bezos has

1114
01:10:34,860 –> 01:10:38,510
no problem with replacing every single one of his

1115
01:10:38,510 –> 01:10:42,230
workers at Amazon with a robot. Yeah,

1116
01:10:42,710 –> 01:10:45,750
he has. No problem. He won’t lose a moment of sleep.

1117
01:10:47,030 –> 01:10:50,550
He won’t. And people want him to lose sleep,

1118
01:10:50,630 –> 01:10:54,310
but he can’t because he’s ascended to a different

1119
01:10:54,310 –> 01:10:57,350
level of. Not to use the Marxist term, but I’m going to go ahead and

1120
01:10:57,350 –> 01:11:00,470
use the Marxist term. He’s ascended to a different level of class consciousness.

1121
01:11:03,440 –> 01:11:06,240
I, I would. I would agree with that, too. I, I guess if you take

1122
01:11:06,240 –> 01:11:09,840
out. If you take out the. All that, all the,

1123
01:11:10,320 –> 01:11:14,120
the nonsense at the billionaire level. Right. And you just come. Come back down

1124
01:11:14,120 –> 01:11:17,960
to Earth at the Millionaire level. Right, Right. Yeah. Those guys. I, I

1125
01:11:17,960 –> 01:11:19,760
feel. I feel like if I met a.

1126
01:11:21,760 –> 01:11:25,560
We. We recently hosted an event for the

1127
01:11:25,560 –> 01:11:29,400
other project we work on. Yeah. At the end of the table with me. And

1128
01:11:29,400 –> 01:11:31,720
I’m not Going to mention names, I don’t want to embarrass him or anything, but

1129
01:11:31,720 –> 01:11:35,440
there was a gentleman at the end of the table that was probably worth, if

1130
01:11:35,440 –> 01:11:39,200
I had to guess, 50 million. That, that was. His net worth is probably

1131
01:11:39,200 –> 01:11:42,880
50 million. Now for those of you listening to this, mine, not even a fraction

1132
01:11:42,880 –> 01:11:46,560
of that. So. But at that level, he

1133
01:11:46,560 –> 01:11:50,200
sat at the end of the table with me, lowly nobody,

1134
01:11:50,440 –> 01:11:54,040
and spoke to me like I was just another guy and he was just

1135
01:11:54,040 –> 01:11:57,840
another guy. That could not happen at the billionaire

1136
01:11:57,840 –> 01:12:01,600
level. No, I, I don’t, I, I couldn’t imagine a

1137
01:12:01,600 –> 01:12:05,200
single billionaire that, that would do that,

1138
01:12:05,200 –> 01:12:08,160
that would sit at a table like that. It was a dinner table. There was

1139
01:12:08,160 –> 01:12:11,080
about 20 of us at dinner. There was, you know, 20 of us at dinner.

1140
01:12:11,080 –> 01:12:14,800
I sat at his end of the table and, and there’s. I, I can’t

1141
01:12:14,800 –> 01:12:17,880
think of another. I cannot think of a single billionaire that would do.

1142
01:12:21,140 –> 01:12:23,300
Maybe there’s one. I could say maybe,

1143
01:12:26,180 –> 01:12:29,820
maybe Musk would do it. Maybe. You think

1144
01:12:29,820 –> 01:12:33,460
so? Maybe. But I, but I also

1145
01:12:33,620 –> 01:12:37,460
think that he’s

1146
01:12:37,460 –> 01:12:41,220
cut of a slightly, only slightly like the, the colors.

1147
01:12:41,220 –> 01:12:44,580
And like you have red and then you have like really, really red, like

1148
01:12:44,820 –> 01:12:48,210
slightly, you know, slightly different colored cloth

1149
01:12:48,690 –> 01:12:52,490
than the rest of them. Only because, and this is

1150
01:12:52,490 –> 01:12:56,250
the only reason why, only because of the amount

1151
01:12:56,250 –> 01:12:59,850
of debt he carries to fund

1152
01:12:59,850 –> 01:13:03,570
all his projects and that if all of the markers

1153
01:13:03,570 –> 01:13:06,130
were called tomorrow, he’d be the brokest man in the world.

1154
01:13:07,890 –> 01:13:11,730
That’s the only thing I gotcha. But I, but, but again,

1155
01:13:12,540 –> 01:13:15,740
I think is the difference between red and really, really red. Like, you know, so

1156
01:13:16,060 –> 01:13:19,420
maybe he would sit at the end of the table. But even there I’m not

1157
01:13:19,420 –> 01:13:22,620
quite sure. I’m sure he has the same attitude as rest of them. I thinking

1158
01:13:22,620 –> 01:13:26,260
the billionaires. My thinking was that that guy is probably the top of the

1159
01:13:26,260 –> 01:13:30,060
top that would sit at that table. Yeah. So 50 million in, in net,

1160
01:13:30,220 –> 01:13:31,420
in like as a.

1161
01:13:34,300 –> 01:13:37,620
Jesus, what’s the word I was just thinking of? Oh, net worth. Net worth. Sorry.

1162
01:13:37,620 –> 01:13:41,090
Thank you. So somebody at around 50 million net worth. Once you get into even

1163
01:13:41,090 –> 01:13:44,730
100 million net worth. I am nobody to them, literally

1164
01:13:44,730 –> 01:13:48,130
nobody. And they’re not okay. Listen to a goddamn thing I say. Well,

1165
01:13:48,530 –> 01:13:52,290
so. Well, okay, so let me, let me, let me frame this this way.

1166
01:13:52,290 –> 01:13:55,890
I’ll frame this this way. So I’m going to tell a little personal

1167
01:13:55,890 –> 01:13:59,690
story and we can move into the next section here. So that kind of proves

1168
01:13:59,690 –> 01:14:01,010
this point a little bit. So

1169
01:14:04,940 –> 01:14:08,580
on my, my father’s side’s a little bit wonky. We

1170
01:14:08,580 –> 01:14:11,060
don’t. We’re not really quite sure, or at least I’m not really quite sure. My

1171
01:14:11,060 –> 01:14:13,980
mother might be quite sure, but I’m not quite sure. But I could definitely speak

1172
01:14:13,980 –> 01:14:16,540
to my mother’s side. So my mother’s side of my family, right?

1173
01:14:17,500 –> 01:14:20,940
My great. My great grandfather. So my

1174
01:14:20,940 –> 01:14:24,620
grandmother’s father was a sharecropper.

1175
01:14:24,940 –> 01:14:28,140
If you know anything about sharecropping in America, you know that that was

1176
01:14:29,590 –> 01:14:33,390
sharecropping in the 1920s, 1930s, 1910s. That was just

1177
01:14:33,390 –> 01:14:36,950
a step above slavery in. In the Jim Crow south, no less.

1178
01:14:37,350 –> 01:14:41,190
Okay, so now we kind of know what framing we’re working with,

1179
01:14:41,190 –> 01:14:44,790
right? My grandmother was one of, I believe, 12

1180
01:14:44,790 –> 01:14:48,230
kids brought in the wash when she was like, 8 years old.

1181
01:14:48,710 –> 01:14:52,550
My grandmother, now my. My great grandfather was a sharecropper.

1182
01:14:52,790 –> 01:14:56,470
My grandmother got a master’s degree. A

1183
01:14:56,470 –> 01:15:00,310
huge story in our family. Educational attainment is a huge thing, as you can

1184
01:15:00,310 –> 01:15:02,470
tell. That’s why I do this podcast. That’s why I talk the way I talk.

1185
01:15:02,470 –> 01:15:05,870
Whatever. Grandma got the master’s degree, right?

1186
01:15:07,070 –> 01:15:10,710
Mom got in

1187
01:15:10,710 –> 01:15:14,310
the. In the 80s, took her till the 80s, but got a law

1188
01:15:14,310 –> 01:15:16,270
degree while working for the federal government.

1189
01:15:17,870 –> 01:15:21,710
I stopped with my master’s degree. My mother wanted me to go on and do

1190
01:15:21,710 –> 01:15:25,330
other things. Things. But I stopped the master’s degree because I thought, well, we’ve had

1191
01:15:25,330 –> 01:15:28,850
enough lawyers in the world. Think I’m good, think I think I’m set.

1192
01:15:30,210 –> 01:15:34,050
And that was as much of a tussle as you can imagine anyway.

1193
01:15:34,770 –> 01:15:38,570
But. But I stopped at a master’s degree, right? And one day I may get

1194
01:15:38,570 –> 01:15:42,090
a doctorate. I don’t know. Just depends. It depends if it’s something interesting, maybe, and

1195
01:15:42,090 –> 01:15:45,010
I don’t have to pay for it. If someone wants to give me an honorary

1196
01:15:45,010 –> 01:15:47,570
doctorate, I’ll take that, too, thank you very much, but

1197
01:15:50,620 –> 01:15:54,420
I won’t turn down the honor. But with each one of those steps

1198
01:15:54,420 –> 01:15:58,180
from sharecropper to where I am

1199
01:15:58,180 –> 01:16:02,020
now, over the course of. Let’s just

1200
01:16:02,020 –> 01:16:05,700
round it out a hundred years, right? Take it a hundred years for the. For

1201
01:16:05,700 –> 01:16:08,500
the side of my family that my mother comes from and that I am now

1202
01:16:08,500 –> 01:16:12,060
the descendant of, to go from

1203
01:16:13,020 –> 01:16:16,850
probably making less than a. Less than five bucks a month

1204
01:16:17,970 –> 01:16:21,610
to where my current net worth is, which I’m not going to say what that

1205
01:16:21,610 –> 01:16:23,730
is on the podcast, but let’s just say

1206
01:16:25,490 –> 01:16:28,810
I could sit at one end of that table that Tom is talking about and

1207
01:16:28,810 –> 01:16:32,610
be comfortable. Now, I could always get more money,

1208
01:16:32,930 –> 01:16:35,770
but I could sit at one end of that table and be comfortable and not

1209
01:16:35,770 –> 01:16:38,610
feel as if I was an imposter sitting at that table.

1210
01:16:41,500 –> 01:16:44,220
There’s a long way from sharecropper to that table.

1211
01:16:45,500 –> 01:16:48,620
Long way. And

1212
01:16:49,500 –> 01:16:53,260
maybe my kid, one of my kids will be a finance major.

1213
01:16:55,100 –> 01:16:58,820
Maybe he will be. I have no idea. But he’s

1214
01:16:58,820 –> 01:17:02,660
going to go the next step up. He might get to

1215
01:17:02,660 –> 01:17:04,940
that 50 million or 100 million.

1216
01:17:06,950 –> 01:17:10,710
And the challenge that I see with leadership is

1217
01:17:11,990 –> 01:17:15,710
Kanye rapped about this. People forget where they

1218
01:17:15,710 –> 01:17:19,270
came from. For sure. People

1219
01:17:19,270 –> 01:17:23,030
forget where they came from. And it’s. It’s something as simple

1220
01:17:23,030 –> 01:17:25,670
as that. Jeff Bezos forgets where he came from.

1221
01:17:26,950 –> 01:17:30,790
So does. So does Bill Gates. Bill Gates absolutely has forgotten where he

1222
01:17:30,790 –> 01:17:34,360
came from. Like, if you had to knock Bill Gates down all the way back

1223
01:17:34,360 –> 01:17:38,120
to putting together computers for, you

1224
01:17:38,120 –> 01:17:41,880
know, some club in the 70s, you

1225
01:17:41,880 –> 01:17:45,520
know, because his dad was a Harvard professor or whatever, he

1226
01:17:45,520 –> 01:17:48,640
wouldn’t be able to do it. He wouldn’t be able to go back down there

1227
01:17:48,640 –> 01:17:52,160
and start all over again. And I often think about that, like all these

1228
01:17:52,160 –> 01:17:55,920
people, all these men who are our version

1229
01:17:55,920 –> 01:17:59,580
of World War I generals in our time, they have forgotten where they came

1230
01:17:59,580 –> 01:18:03,420
from. And that’s the fundamental mistake. And

1231
01:18:03,420 –> 01:18:07,060
so the question you asked originally about the boards, the boards are also

1232
01:18:07,060 –> 01:18:10,820
full of people who are aspirational and want

1233
01:18:10,820 –> 01:18:14,500
to forget where they came from. And the. The

1234
01:18:14,500 –> 01:18:17,180
CEO to CFO change,

1235
01:18:18,220 –> 01:18:21,780
or as I put, well, yeah, we’ll just use that. The CEO to

1236
01:18:21,780 –> 01:18:24,950
CFO change. That shift reflects an

1237
01:18:24,950 –> 01:18:28,750
aspirational desire to have their stock price go up so they

1238
01:18:28,750 –> 01:18:32,310
can sit it, so they can move up chairs in that table.

1239
01:18:37,750 –> 01:18:41,110
Sometimes psychological explanations are just really simple. Sometimes they’re not complicated.

1240
01:18:41,830 –> 01:18:42,390
You know,

1241
01:18:47,030 –> 01:18:50,790
back to the book, Back to the First World War by John

1242
01:18:50,790 –> 01:18:51,350
Keegan.

1243
01:19:00,040 –> 01:19:03,240
There’s one other point I want to make, but I want to say this first.

1244
01:19:05,240 –> 01:19:08,760
The book rounds out with a

1245
01:19:08,760 –> 01:19:12,560
chapter entitled America and Armageddon

1246
01:19:12,560 –> 01:19:16,160
about the entering of America into World

1247
01:19:16,160 –> 01:19:19,170
War I. One of the points

1248
01:19:20,210 –> 01:19:23,890
that is interesting in

1249
01:19:23,890 –> 01:19:27,530
here, in this chapter, is Keegan’s

1250
01:19:27,530 –> 01:19:31,290
effort to pull apart why America’s entry into World

1251
01:19:31,290 –> 01:19:35,050
War I was so important and the role of

1252
01:19:35,050 –> 01:19:38,890
great power politics in a country that

1253
01:19:38,890 –> 01:19:42,130
is currently in our geopolitical

1254
01:19:42,130 –> 01:19:44,550
thoughts and mines.

1255
01:19:46,950 –> 01:19:50,550
So Russia’s exit from the First World War

1256
01:19:51,910 –> 01:19:54,310
was because of German meddling and interference.

1257
01:19:56,870 –> 01:20:00,630
Germany knew that Russia was having

1258
01:20:00,630 –> 01:20:04,470
a revolution, and so they put a

1259
01:20:04,470 –> 01:20:08,310
guy named Lenin on a train and sent him out through, I

1260
01:20:08,310 –> 01:20:11,880
believe it was Finland Station, ensured his safe

1261
01:20:11,880 –> 01:20:15,200
passage and he wound up in Petrograde

1262
01:20:15,920 –> 01:20:19,520
and started doing the things that, well, Lenin was going to do.

1263
01:20:22,000 –> 01:20:25,760
The Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War drained

1264
01:20:26,160 –> 01:20:29,520
at minimum 10 million men from the Eastern Front,

1265
01:20:30,560 –> 01:20:34,360
pulled them back into the country and ensured that

1266
01:20:34,360 –> 01:20:38,130
Germany would be able to, would be able to hold the

1267
01:20:38,130 –> 01:20:41,890
Western Front and be able to hold out against both the French,

1268
01:20:41,890 –> 01:20:45,250
the combined, the combined will of the French and the British

1269
01:20:45,570 –> 01:20:47,250
by at least late 1917.

1270
01:20:49,170 –> 01:20:52,850
That’s why the Germans sent Lenin on a train to

1271
01:20:53,010 –> 01:20:54,850
Petrograde Petrograd.

1272
01:20:56,610 –> 01:21:00,050
It was a tactical move that had strategic

1273
01:21:00,050 –> 01:21:03,740
implications. However,

1274
01:21:03,980 –> 01:21:07,820
what the Germans did not anticipate was

1275
01:21:08,060 –> 01:21:10,620
the Americans showing up.

1276
01:21:11,660 –> 01:21:15,340
Matter of fact, the chapter

1277
01:21:15,340 –> 01:21:19,100
10 opens up with this from

1278
01:21:19,500 –> 01:21:22,980
the Secretary of State for the

1279
01:21:22,980 –> 01:21:25,660
Navy of Germany. I believe

1280
01:21:26,620 –> 01:21:30,010
he said this about the Americans and I quote,

1281
01:21:30,410 –> 01:21:34,250
they will not even come. Admiral Capel, the Secretary of State

1282
01:21:34,250 –> 01:21:37,770
for the Navy, had assured the budgetary committee of the German

1283
01:21:37,770 –> 01:21:40,570
Parliament on 31 January 1917,

1284
01:21:41,530 –> 01:21:44,810
because our submarines will sink them. Thus

1285
01:21:44,810 –> 01:21:48,610
America from a military point of view means nothing. And

1286
01:21:48,610 –> 01:21:51,370
again, nothing. And for a third time, nothing.

1287
01:21:56,740 –> 01:21:59,940
Town talked previously about a tipping point right of power.

1288
01:22:00,660 –> 01:22:03,940
And initially, Germany’s

1289
01:22:04,100 –> 01:22:07,740
analysis of America was correct. At the beginning of

1290
01:22:07,740 –> 01:22:11,020
1917, four months before the United States entered the war on the side of the

1291
01:22:11,020 –> 01:22:14,660
Allies its army, as opposed to its large and

1292
01:22:14,660 –> 01:22:17,580
modern navy, by the way, all the navies in the world were in competition with

1293
01:22:17,580 –> 01:22:20,190
each other to build better boats. It was kind of amazing, actually.

1294
01:22:21,710 –> 01:22:25,550
Might indeed they still are. Have you seen stuff coming out of

1295
01:22:25,550 –> 01:22:29,230
China right now? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well,

1296
01:22:29,310 –> 01:22:32,830
and we’re, we’re, we’re.

1297
01:22:33,230 –> 01:22:35,870
We’re busy trying to figure out how to basically put.

1298
01:22:37,230 –> 01:22:40,790
Without getting too much into the details. Glad you follow some of this. We’re busy

1299
01:22:40,790 –> 01:22:44,590
trying to try to figure out how to, how to put a nuclear warhead

1300
01:22:45,110 –> 01:22:48,910
on a missile you could fire out of a torpedo tube on the top

1301
01:22:48,910 –> 01:22:52,710
of a ship and turn into like an arrow that travels

1302
01:22:52,710 –> 01:22:56,550
at supersonic speed. Because that’s how we’re going to

1303
01:22:56,550 –> 01:22:58,870
solve that problem. That’s what we’re working on

1304
01:23:00,310 –> 01:23:04,030
anyway. Anyway. Sorry, go

1305
01:23:04,030 –> 01:23:06,870
ahead. No, it’s like

1306
01:23:07,830 –> 01:23:11,310
so, so one of the things, just as I know, so one of the things

1307
01:23:11,310 –> 01:23:14,190
at the, at the end of World War II, when we were doing the nuclear,

1308
01:23:14,350 –> 01:23:17,390
nuclear tests before we came up with the hydrogen bomb.

1309
01:23:17,790 –> 01:23:20,630
Edward Teller came up with the hydrogen bomb a couple of years after the atomic

1310
01:23:20,630 –> 01:23:23,630
bomb got dropped. In that couple of years, we were testing

1311
01:23:26,670 –> 01:23:30,430
nuclear warheads. We had the idea to put.

1312
01:23:30,670 –> 01:23:33,910
I think I said this before on the show. But to put a nuclear warhead

1313
01:23:33,910 –> 01:23:37,580
on a shell and shoot it out of the, the turret of a

1314
01:23:37,580 –> 01:23:37,900
tank.

1315
01:23:42,540 –> 01:23:45,340
This is why we’re the greatest country on the, on earth and also the most

1316
01:23:45,340 –> 01:23:48,940
dangerous. This is why. Because some junior officer, not even a

1317
01:23:48,940 –> 01:23:52,620
junior officer. And I bet it was a Marine Corps officer. Honestly,

1318
01:23:52,700 –> 01:23:56,540
that’s Marine Corps thinking. Why don’t we just take this warhead and just put

1319
01:23:56,540 –> 01:24:00,260
it on this thing and just shoot it at those guys? Yeah, yeah. Make

1320
01:24:00,260 –> 01:24:03,830
them smaller. Why are you making these giant, like these giant. Make them

1321
01:24:03,830 –> 01:24:07,510
smaller. Actually, you know what I mean, the logic and thinking there is

1322
01:24:07,510 –> 01:24:11,190
not terrible. Plus, plus that’s an American right there.

1323
01:24:11,190 –> 01:24:14,390
That’s how you know you’re an American. No, no, because think of, think about it.

1324
01:24:14,390 –> 01:24:17,950
Plus the destruction is isolated, like, right,

1325
01:24:17,950 –> 01:24:21,790
like, like, like you can, it’s not like you’re. Again, what

1326
01:24:21,790 –> 01:24:25,390
we did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was in my opinion just

1327
01:24:25,870 –> 01:24:29,720
criminal. Well, maybe not criminal, but it was, ah,

1328
01:24:29,720 –> 01:24:32,800
it was, I mean it was world changing.

1329
01:24:33,520 –> 01:24:37,200
We, we now, we now have the option to have moral qualms about

1330
01:24:37,200 –> 01:24:40,880
it, which we may not have had that option if we had not dropped the

1331
01:24:40,880 –> 01:24:44,640
bomb. Agreed. Agreed. And I’ll leave it at that. That’s my,

1332
01:24:44,640 –> 01:24:48,280
that’s my whole, that’s why, that’s my conclusion about it. Agreed, but,

1333
01:24:48,280 –> 01:24:51,920
but again, fast forward to now. We don’t need that same level

1334
01:24:51,920 –> 01:24:55,360
of destruction to make the point. The same point. We put this, we put the

1335
01:24:55,360 –> 01:24:58,740
war. We, we put them on arrowheads instead of,

1336
01:24:59,940 –> 01:25:02,340
instead of moabs where

1337
01:25:04,180 –> 01:25:07,700
we’re taking out a square block, like a city block

1338
01:25:07,700 –> 01:25:11,300
instead of, you know what I mean? It’s, it’s

1339
01:25:11,300 –> 01:25:15,100
precision. It’s just, it’s right, it’s instrumental. It’s not, it’s not

1340
01:25:15,100 –> 01:25:18,860
like I, I, whoever came up with that idea, I, I think we should explore

1341
01:25:18,860 –> 01:25:22,700
it. Oh, I think they have been for a

1342
01:25:22,700 –> 01:25:26,460
while now. Anyway, to

1343
01:25:26,460 –> 01:25:30,140
finish the sentence about America, Its

1344
01:25:30,140 –> 01:25:33,180
army ranked in size 107,000 men,

1345
01:25:33,500 –> 01:25:37,300
17th in the world. It had no experience of large scale operations

1346
01:25:37,300 –> 01:25:41,060
since the armistice and Appomattox 51 years earlier and possessed no

1347
01:25:41,060 –> 01:25:44,740
modern equipment heavier than its medium machine guns. Its

1348
01:25:44,740 –> 01:25:48,300
reserve, the National Guard. The larger, with 132,000 men,

1349
01:25:48,380 –> 01:25:52,140
was the part time militia of the individual 48 states, poorly

1350
01:25:52,140 –> 01:25:55,860
trained even in the richer states and subject to the sketchiest federal

1351
01:25:55,940 –> 01:25:59,260
supervision. Again, understating it like a Britisher can only

1352
01:25:59,260 –> 01:26:02,900
understate it. Those guys are running around in the woods like

1353
01:26:03,300 –> 01:26:07,020
shooting at food. Okay, that was, that was the National Guard. Back in the

1354
01:26:07,020 –> 01:26:10,660
day, the only first class American force, the United

1355
01:26:10,660 –> 01:26:14,300
States Marine Corps. 1234. I

1356
01:26:14,300 –> 01:26:17,990
love Marine Corps. 15,500 strong was

1357
01:26:17,990 –> 01:26:21,750
scattered in America’s overseas possessions and areas of intervention,

1358
01:26:21,830 –> 01:26:25,550
including several Central American republics which the United States had decided

1359
01:26:25,550 –> 01:26:29,310
to police in the aftermath of the Spanish American War of 1898.

1360
01:26:29,310 –> 01:26:31,990
By the way, one of those Central American republics was

1361
01:26:32,870 –> 01:26:34,470
your friend in mind, Cuba.

1362
01:26:36,790 –> 01:26:40,470
Anyway, by the way, I met a guy the other day who’s,

1363
01:26:40,710 –> 01:26:44,510
who knew, who knew a guy whose grandfather

1364
01:26:45,230 –> 01:26:48,990
rode with Pancho Villa. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, I

1365
01:26:48,990 –> 01:26:52,750
was like, it’s pretty awesome. That’s awesome. Ah,

1366
01:26:52,750 –> 01:26:55,150
we’re not making guys like that anymore anyway,

1367
01:26:56,670 –> 01:26:59,710
but the United States. And then I’ll go to this.

1368
01:27:00,830 –> 01:27:04,390
And he does say this, by the way, Keegan points this out to Tom’s, to

1369
01:27:04,390 –> 01:27:08,230
Tom’s credit. Rare are the times in a great war when the fortunes of

1370
01:27:08,230 –> 01:27:11,980
one side or the other are transformed by the sudden accrual accretion of

1371
01:27:11,980 –> 01:27:15,260
a disequiliberating reinforce, a disequiliberating

1372
01:27:15,260 –> 01:27:18,900
reinforcement. Those of Napoleon’s enemies were so transformed in

1373
01:27:18,900 –> 01:27:22,580
1813 when the failure of his Moscow campaign brought the Russian army to the side

1374
01:27:22,580 –> 01:27:26,420
of British and Austria. Those of the United States against the Confederacy were

1375
01:27:26,420 –> 01:27:30,020
transformed in 1863 when the adoption of conscription brought the

1376
01:27:30,020 –> 01:27:33,340
North’s millions into play against the South’s hundreds of thousands.

1377
01:27:33,980 –> 01:27:37,540
Those of an isolated Britain and an almost defeated Soviet Union would be

1378
01:27:37,540 –> 01:27:41,360
transformed in 1941 when Hitler’s intemperance declaration of war against

1379
01:27:41,360 –> 01:27:45,040
America brought the power of the world’s leading state to stand against that of Nazi

1380
01:27:45,040 –> 01:27:48,640
Germany as well as Imperial Japan. By 1918, President

1381
01:27:48,640 –> 01:27:52,000
Wilson’s decision to declare war on Germany and its allies had brought such an

1382
01:27:52,000 –> 01:27:55,400
accretion to the Allied side. Capell’s theory,

1383
01:27:55,960 –> 01:27:59,360
quote, unquote. They will never come, have been triumphed or have been

1384
01:27:59,360 –> 01:28:02,400
trumped in six months by America’s

1385
01:28:02,400 –> 01:28:06,050
melodramatic Lafayette. I am here.

1386
01:28:07,970 –> 01:28:11,570
The United States had not wanted to enter the war. America, its

1387
01:28:11,570 –> 01:28:15,250
president Woodrow Wilson had said, was, quote, too proud to fight, close quote.

1388
01:28:15,410 –> 01:28:19,050
And it has sustained a succession of diplomatic affronts from the sinking of the

1389
01:28:19,050 –> 01:28:22,850
Lusitania and its American passengers to the German attempts

1390
01:28:22,850 –> 01:28:26,410
to foment a divisionary war in Mexico without responding to

1391
01:28:26,410 –> 01:28:28,210
provocation by material means.

1392
01:28:29,890 –> 01:28:33,730
Now he does talk about black troops, interestingly enough in

1393
01:28:33,730 –> 01:28:37,480
here, kind of does an interesting aside about that. You can read, you can read

1394
01:28:37,480 –> 01:28:40,800
about that. But then he goes into a deep under, a deep

1395
01:28:40,960 –> 01:28:44,480
dive into Russian Bolshevikism and into

1396
01:28:44,800 –> 01:28:47,760
why Russia With Trotsky and Lenin

1397
01:28:48,480 –> 01:28:52,200
at the. At the forefront, were having such trouble with the

1398
01:28:52,200 –> 01:28:55,680
Germans and why they struggled to sign the Bre

1399
01:28:56,480 –> 01:28:59,880
what is it? The Brest Litzlock

1400
01:28:59,880 –> 01:29:03,480
Treaty. But one of the points that he made, which I did not know, I

1401
01:29:03,480 –> 01:29:05,970
was not aware of, was that Finland,

1402
01:29:06,930 –> 01:29:10,130
interestingly enough, was once part of Russia

1403
01:29:13,010 –> 01:29:16,730
before World War I. Did not know that they

1404
01:29:16,730 –> 01:29:20,530
were also part of that nationalistic friction

1405
01:29:20,690 –> 01:29:24,290
that began to grow because of the collapse of

1406
01:29:24,370 –> 01:29:27,810
the aristocracies and the collapse of the aristocratic system

1407
01:29:28,530 –> 01:29:32,210
in Europe as a result of World War I.

1408
01:29:33,280 –> 01:29:37,080
Now, as America entered the war, the

1409
01:29:37,080 –> 01:29:40,680
Turks began to collapse and the Ottoman Empire began to fall

1410
01:29:40,680 –> 01:29:44,280
apart after Gallipoli. And of course

1411
01:29:44,280 –> 01:29:48,040
the machinations of T.E. lawrence and the rise of the

1412
01:29:48,040 –> 01:29:50,240
Arabs who wanted their own countries

1413
01:29:51,440 –> 01:29:54,880
began as well towards the end of

1414
01:29:54,960 –> 01:29:58,660
World War I. And of course has led to all of the

1415
01:29:58,660 –> 01:30:02,420
current shenanigans we have around Palestine,

1416
01:30:02,660 –> 01:30:05,060
Israel, Iraq, Iran,

1417
01:30:06,180 –> 01:30:09,860
Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and

1418
01:30:09,860 –> 01:30:12,980
on and on and on. Also

1419
01:30:13,380 –> 01:30:17,020
Russia, just to point this out, is

1420
01:30:17,020 –> 01:30:20,860
still working through the exoduses of World

1421
01:30:20,860 –> 01:30:24,590
War I in its current fight with the Ukraine,

1422
01:30:25,310 –> 01:30:29,070
by the way, the Donbas region, all of that. Germany

1423
01:30:29,070 –> 01:30:32,870
successfully pushed into that during World War I and was loathe to

1424
01:30:32,870 –> 01:30:36,270
give it up. Matter of fact, the spot where Putin is now

1425
01:30:36,590 –> 01:30:39,990
coming from, coming from east to west, the

1426
01:30:39,990 –> 01:30:43,710
Germans made it to that spot in World War I, coming from west to east

1427
01:30:43,790 –> 01:30:47,230
and were loath to give it up as part of the Treaty of

1428
01:30:47,230 –> 01:30:50,600
Versailles. Ukraine has always

1429
01:30:50,840 –> 01:30:52,680
had problems.

1430
01:30:56,520 –> 01:30:59,960
In the close of our episode today,

1431
01:31:00,120 –> 01:31:03,640
a couple of things that I would like to point out as we’ve had a

1432
01:31:03,640 –> 01:31:06,800
lively conversation, I would encourage you to pick up the First World War. I would

1433
01:31:06,800 –> 01:31:10,440
also encourage you to pick up John Keegan’s second volume, the Second

1434
01:31:10,440 –> 01:31:14,200
World War, where he talks about in a one volume

1435
01:31:15,290 –> 01:31:19,010
history about everything that went on in, went on in

1436
01:31:19,010 –> 01:31:22,410
World War II. A couple of things to point out here.

1437
01:31:24,090 –> 01:31:26,690
One of the real stories, and we didn’t talk too much about this today, but

1438
01:31:26,690 –> 01:31:30,250
one of the real stories of World War I that often doesn’t get

1439
01:31:30,250 –> 01:31:34,090
talked about is the story of the the friction

1440
01:31:34,170 –> 01:31:37,930
that lay between local people who are focused on local battles

1441
01:31:38,250 –> 01:31:41,700
versus elite people who were focused on more global

1442
01:31:42,180 –> 01:31:45,900
concerns, right? And we even have this friction and this

1443
01:31:45,900 –> 01:31:49,420
challenge today. One of the things that’s

1444
01:31:49,420 –> 01:31:52,820
geopolitically lamented with the rise of quote unquote

1445
01:31:52,820 –> 01:31:56,420
populism is the idea that somehow, and

1446
01:31:58,020 –> 01:32:01,820
there is a hook underneath this, that somehow being

1447
01:32:01,820 –> 01:32:05,380
focused on local things for local people in your local backyard

1448
01:32:05,780 –> 01:32:09,550
somehow makes you provincial or unable to understand global

1449
01:32:10,190 –> 01:32:13,910
concerns. But then there’s

1450
01:32:13,910 –> 01:32:17,390
also the opposite side of that, where being too focused on global

1451
01:32:17,390 –> 01:32:19,710
concerns and being too cosmopolitan

1452
01:32:21,150 –> 01:32:24,910
leaves you at a remove, like Mr. Hague and many of the other

1453
01:32:24,910 –> 01:32:28,550
generals from what the actual local people who

1454
01:32:28,550 –> 01:32:31,390
actually voted for you actually want.

1455
01:32:33,320 –> 01:32:37,120
And I don’t know how you solve that problem, but what I

1456
01:32:37,120 –> 01:32:40,360
do know is that when both positions are hardened,

1457
01:32:40,760 –> 01:32:44,600
it makes you blindly arrogant, and then you wind up in a space

1458
01:32:45,080 –> 01:32:48,920
where war can happen. And I think. I think

1459
01:32:49,240 –> 01:32:52,840
over the last hundred years, we’ve been doing our damnedest as human beings

1460
01:32:53,000 –> 01:32:56,760
to try to balance that and to try to avoid that

1461
01:32:56,760 –> 01:33:00,290
blind arrogance. The other

1462
01:33:00,370 –> 01:33:03,730
thing that we didn’t point out too much, we kind of touched on it a

1463
01:33:03,730 –> 01:33:07,490
little bit with the flattening of hierarchies when we had our conversation

1464
01:33:07,490 –> 01:33:11,210
about CEOs, is this. This is sort of the

1465
01:33:11,210 –> 01:33:12,450
last point I would make today,

1466
01:33:14,770 –> 01:33:18,370
100 plus years later, after World War I, at the close of World War I,

1467
01:33:18,450 –> 01:33:21,250
with the death of the European

1468
01:33:21,810 –> 01:33:25,400
aristocratic class. Or

1469
01:33:25,400 –> 01:33:29,040
maybe not death. Death’s probably an over. An over exaggeration. It just

1470
01:33:29,040 –> 01:33:32,800
goes into other places. Diminishment. Yeah, diminishment, Absolutely.

1471
01:33:32,800 –> 01:33:36,600
The diminishment of the European aristocratic class. We live in a world

1472
01:33:36,600 –> 01:33:40,360
where, particularly in America, where hierarchies are ruthlessly flattened

1473
01:33:40,520 –> 01:33:44,240
in the pursuit of liberal egalitarianism. You see this

1474
01:33:44,240 –> 01:33:47,320
in the way that. To go back to Bill Gates for just a minute, Bill

1475
01:33:47,320 –> 01:33:51,080
Gates dresses. He dresses like he’s your uncle

1476
01:33:51,430 –> 01:33:52,710
from the 1980s.

1477
01:33:56,470 –> 01:33:59,190
He may have forgotten where he came from, but he knows how to put on

1478
01:33:59,190 –> 01:34:03,030
the uniform like he hasn’t. And

1479
01:34:03,030 –> 01:34:06,670
yeah, his Nikes are more expensive than yours, but they’re

1480
01:34:06,670 –> 01:34:09,910
still Nikes. H.

1481
01:34:11,910 –> 01:34:15,030
There’s something that has happened, and I think it’s one of those un.

1482
01:34:15,510 –> 01:34:18,790
Undiscussed, unmentioned outgrowths from World War I,

1483
01:34:19,500 –> 01:34:21,500
where hierarchies,

1484
01:34:23,740 –> 01:34:27,540
no, you need leaders to do things, and you need leaders to

1485
01:34:27,540 –> 01:34:31,260
be at least the way humans have the. Have the pyramid

1486
01:34:31,260 –> 01:34:34,780
set up. You need leaders to be at the top. You need people

1487
01:34:34,940 –> 01:34:38,620
to execute, to be in the middle. And then you have a whole bunch of

1488
01:34:38,620 –> 01:34:42,300
people at the bottom that are just walking around waiting for direction.

1489
01:34:42,700 –> 01:34:46,150
This is how we have our hierarchy set up.

1490
01:34:46,390 –> 01:34:49,590
And hierarchy exists almost as a function of reality.

1491
01:34:50,470 –> 01:34:54,110
But the pendulum that we live with now

1492
01:34:54,110 –> 01:34:57,510
has swung far away from where it was originally in a

1493
01:34:57,510 –> 01:35:01,270
pre1914 world. And I think that this is the part that,

1494
01:35:01,270 –> 01:35:04,790
like, frustrates us when we can see it. Other places.

1495
01:35:05,110 –> 01:35:07,990
And we wonder, rightly so, probably

1496
01:35:09,510 –> 01:35:13,320
why is it that even now, or that now kings and prime

1497
01:35:13,320 –> 01:35:17,080
ministers want to wear Nikes and Cosby sweaters, but they don’t seem

1498
01:35:17,080 –> 01:35:20,840
to be willing to abandon the other aspects of their elitism? This is

1499
01:35:20,840 –> 01:35:24,400
why there’s a lot of chest thumping in the United States about billionaires and

1500
01:35:24,400 –> 01:35:27,760
taxing the rich. Lot of chest thumping about this

1501
01:35:28,320 –> 01:35:32,160
and very little ability to actually cross the gap and talk to those people

1502
01:35:32,640 –> 01:35:36,320
because of hierarchies. So

1503
01:35:36,320 –> 01:35:39,830
those are some of the lessons that I have picked up from the war to

1504
01:35:39,830 –> 01:35:43,510
end all wars. Tom,

1505
01:35:43,510 –> 01:35:46,790
what do we need to learn from World War I we can apply to our

1506
01:35:46,790 –> 01:35:50,430
leadership struggles 111 years on?

1507
01:35:52,830 –> 01:35:56,110
I think there’s. Without getting, I mean, we could probably have

1508
01:35:56,430 –> 01:36:00,270
another podcast episode just on this question alone, because

1509
01:36:00,270 –> 01:36:03,230
I think there’s a tremendous amount that we can think about

1510
01:36:04,040 –> 01:36:07,760
from, from the technological advancements, right? Without World War I,

1511
01:36:07,760 –> 01:36:11,080
we wouldn’t have the tank. And every war, every subsequent

1512
01:36:11,160 –> 01:36:14,360
subsequent war since then has, has

1513
01:36:14,440 –> 01:36:17,880
introduced technology at, at a

1514
01:36:17,880 –> 01:36:21,400
lightning pace, right? So like, so it’s, it’s like that

1515
01:36:21,400 –> 01:36:25,120
whole necessity is the mother of invention thing, right? So on a, at

1516
01:36:25,120 –> 01:36:28,880
a, at a company, at a corporate level, same idea, if your company

1517
01:36:28,880 –> 01:36:32,640
is being threatened to go out of business, some sort of hostile takeover, etc. Etc.

1518
01:36:32,880 –> 01:36:36,640
You’re looking for some sort of technological advancement to save your

1519
01:36:36,880 –> 01:36:40,240
skin, right? Like, so we, we learned that from

1520
01:36:40,240 –> 01:36:43,040
warfare that you can, you don’t have to lean into.

1521
01:36:44,240 –> 01:36:48,040
You can, you can lean into the technology version of your company in order

1522
01:36:48,040 –> 01:36:51,560
to try to save yourself or, and save your, your people. The, the

1523
01:36:51,560 –> 01:36:55,240
hierarchy thing. I, I don’t think I could really say a lot more to. Other

1524
01:36:55,240 –> 01:36:58,850
than the fact that I think it, I think it’s changed from the bottom

1525
01:36:58,850 –> 01:37:02,530
up, not the other way around. I think that the people on the bottom have

1526
01:37:02,530 –> 01:37:05,930
forced the issue going up because it’s.

1527
01:37:07,130 –> 01:37:10,890
There is some realization somewhere along the line that, that somebody

1528
01:37:10,890 –> 01:37:14,690
said, hey, without those people on the bottom, that company doesn’t exist.

1529
01:37:14,690 –> 01:37:17,610
So we have to act. We have to. We. We should know that we’re important

1530
01:37:17,850 –> 01:37:21,570
and we should walk around as if we’re no less important than the people above

1531
01:37:21,570 –> 01:37:25,380
us. So like, now, that being said, I. The way

1532
01:37:25,380 –> 01:37:29,220
that you described it is perfectly okay with that thinking because the people on

1533
01:37:29,220 –> 01:37:32,860
the bottom that you are describing walking around aimlessly are still doing

1534
01:37:32,860 –> 01:37:36,580
that, even though it’s the, it’s the middle, it’s the middle section

1535
01:37:36,580 –> 01:37:40,140
that, that ties the two, right? Meaning, like the middle

1536
01:37:40,140 –> 01:37:43,900
section Kind of gets it. They weren’t at the bottom long enough ago

1537
01:37:43,900 –> 01:37:46,820
that they don’t remember and they want to get to the top so they still

1538
01:37:47,220 –> 01:37:50,990
assume aspire. I think it’s that middle section that really drives that.

1539
01:37:51,790 –> 01:37:55,150
I think they drive it. I think they, they sharpen the knife at both ends

1540
01:37:55,150 –> 01:37:58,470
because I think they drive the wedge. I think they drive the wedge at the

1541
01:37:58,470 –> 01:38:02,150
top and I think they absorb the, the, the wants and

1542
01:38:02,150 –> 01:38:05,750
fears from the bottom. Right. But I think they do it very calculatedly and I

1543
01:38:05,750 –> 01:38:09,510
think that that’s that middle part of the hierarchy that actually runs more

1544
01:38:09,510 –> 01:38:13,150
of the world than we think it does. Yeah. From a corporate level. I’m not

1545
01:38:13,150 –> 01:38:16,180
talking about the military necessary. But from the war. No, I think every. I think,

1546
01:38:16,180 –> 01:38:19,180
I think everywhere. No, I think you’re right. I think everywhere. I also think it.

1547
01:38:19,180 –> 01:38:21,700
And it just occurred to me, I just clicked over as you were saying it.

1548
01:38:22,660 –> 01:38:26,340
This is the unintended consequence of,

1549
01:38:26,660 –> 01:38:30,500
of the Marxist revolution in Russia. Because what

1550
01:38:30,500 –> 01:38:34,340
Marx. Not Marx. Well, well, yeah, what Marx was proposing

1551
01:38:34,340 –> 01:38:37,780
was a rejiggering of class structures.

1552
01:38:37,940 –> 01:38:41,380
Sure. So that the proletariat would have,

1553
01:38:41,750 –> 01:38:45,510
would have shared common power or the means of production

1554
01:38:45,510 –> 01:38:49,310
or whatever fancy term Marxists are using now. I think they’re still using means

1555
01:38:49,310 –> 01:38:52,990
of production. I think mom dummy recently said that the New York City mayoral

1556
01:38:52,990 –> 01:38:56,710
candidate talking about how we will redistribute the means of production. And I was,

1557
01:38:56,950 –> 01:38:58,630
yeah, I did hear that. And I thought,

1558
01:39:00,150 –> 01:39:03,950
kiddo, you don’t say that out loud. You don’t,

1559
01:39:03,950 –> 01:39:07,790
don’t let your inside voice out. Gotta be careful about that. You gotta

1560
01:39:07,790 –> 01:39:11,610
watch out for that anyway. But I think

1561
01:39:11,610 –> 01:39:15,370
the knock on concept, the knock on effect of Lenin actually trying

1562
01:39:15,370 –> 01:39:18,570
to make that happen in a nation state like Russia

1563
01:39:19,130 –> 01:39:22,010
during the course of all the chaos of World War I,

1564
01:39:24,570 –> 01:39:28,170
weirdly enough, had a positive effect. And I almost never say anything positive about

1565
01:39:28,170 –> 01:39:31,810
Marxism because I think it’s a terrible theory for how humans should be

1566
01:39:31,810 –> 01:39:35,520
organized. But I think it had a, that was the

1567
01:39:35,520 –> 01:39:39,160
one positive effect is that the people

1568
01:39:39,160 –> 01:39:42,720
from the bottom up could now push the issue

1569
01:39:42,720 –> 01:39:46,040
more. Yeah. Because they actually had a

1570
01:39:46,040 –> 01:39:49,600
material example of what pushing that

1571
01:39:49,600 –> 01:39:53,440
issue meant. And by the way, I always, and I’ve always said on this,

1572
01:39:53,440 –> 01:39:57,200
this on the show people pre1920, pre1950

1573
01:39:57,200 –> 01:40:00,720
even I’m willing to give grace to on Marxism,

1574
01:40:00,980 –> 01:40:04,820
I really am. Because you don’t know what you don’t

1575
01:40:04,820 –> 01:40:08,060
know. You don’t know what you don’t know. Right. You just, you just don’t hell,

1576
01:40:08,060 –> 01:40:11,900
I’ll not even 1950 I’ll say pre1930 because by 1930 things are

1577
01:40:11,900 –> 01:40:15,580
starting to like sort of pop up under Stalin where people were like oh this

1578
01:40:15,580 –> 01:40:19,300
is not maybe the best thing. But up until that

1579
01:40:19,300 –> 01:40:22,940
point they didn’t know. They, they

1580
01:40:22,940 –> 01:40:26,780
actually genuinely did not know what this would look like in, in reality. And

1581
01:40:26,780 –> 01:40:30,490
they want. Wanted a chance to try it and Lenin, even

1582
01:40:30,490 –> 01:40:34,210
though he was a sadistic sociopathic murderer, gave them

1583
01:40:34,210 –> 01:40:36,250
a chance to try it. Yeah.

1584
01:40:37,850 –> 01:40:41,210
Anyway, go ahead. So yeah. So the middle folks. The knife sharpens at both ends.

1585
01:40:41,450 –> 01:40:44,930
A couple, a couple other things I think of is like you know, again this

1586
01:40:44,930 –> 01:40:48,570
is really where we start think. This is really the point in history

1587
01:40:48,570 –> 01:40:52,330
where we start thinking we should play out scenarios in

1588
01:40:52,330 –> 01:40:56,130
live action instead of just on paper. The war, I. E.

1589
01:40:56,130 –> 01:40:59,730
The war games, things like that. So, so that led to. Again, so in

1590
01:40:59,730 –> 01:41:03,530
corporate America you’re starting to. When you lay out your. Earlier you

1591
01:41:03,530 –> 01:41:07,250
talked about laying out the marketing plan, you’re laying out these marketing plans. There

1592
01:41:07,250 –> 01:41:10,970
are environments where you can test these things before you go live

1593
01:41:11,130 –> 01:41:14,730
so that you’re. It’s basically our version of war games, right? You. How

1594
01:41:14,730 –> 01:41:18,530
would you. You have focus groups, you have all kinds of things. You can test

1595
01:41:18,530 –> 01:41:22,310
these things and start before you deploy your actual hard earned money, so

1596
01:41:22,310 –> 01:41:26,070
to speak. So between that the. And then I think the

1597
01:41:26,070 –> 01:41:29,910
biggest thing honestly that, that, that we learned from World War I is

1598
01:41:29,910 –> 01:41:33,630
that adaptability factor. Like you’re going into something full

1599
01:41:33,630 –> 01:41:37,430
steam ahead. Something happens, you have to change directions. I, I

1600
01:41:37,430 –> 01:41:41,110
think it’s the, I think it’s the first instance of where we can use

1601
01:41:41,110 –> 01:41:43,710
the term we need to pivot like,

1602
01:41:45,310 –> 01:41:48,980
like this is happening, we need to pivot. Let’s focus our

1603
01:41:48,980 –> 01:41:52,780
attention, let’s change the focus. You know and because that’s what they did, especially

1604
01:41:52,940 –> 01:41:56,460
once the US Got involved in the war, you saw that much more clearly when

1605
01:41:56,460 –> 01:42:00,060
the US Got involved in the war because the US Looked at and said hey,

1606
01:42:00,060 –> 01:42:03,420
we got the smallest army in this game. We’re not willing to lose our people,

1607
01:42:03,740 –> 01:42:07,380
so we need to be better at this. Like, and you saw that

1608
01:42:07,380 –> 01:42:10,900
when, when you saw some of the, the US Generals get involved and you saw

1609
01:42:10,900 –> 01:42:14,670
some of the. Was a clear. There was a clear. You’re talking about

1610
01:42:14,670 –> 01:42:18,510
the Psalm and like there’s other battles in there. There was clear differences once the

1611
01:42:18,510 –> 01:42:22,350
US Got involved in those war in that war that said we’re not

1612
01:42:22,350 –> 01:42:24,990
just going to throw caution to the wind. We’re not just going to throw Our

1613
01:42:24,990 –> 01:42:28,670
boys to the, to the wolves, so to speak. And you, you start in World

1614
01:42:28,670 –> 01:42:32,470
War II as well. Like just, it happens throughout

1615
01:42:32,470 –> 01:42:35,950
the course of our warfare here. So I think, I think World War I was

1616
01:42:35,950 –> 01:42:39,640
really the epitome of all of that. The, the adaptability, the planning, the

1617
01:42:39,640 –> 01:42:43,440
structure, the all, you know, and again from a corporate environment, what you take out

1618
01:42:43,440 –> 01:42:47,120
of that is the exact same thing. Adaptability, structure and planning, like the same

1619
01:42:47,120 –> 01:42:50,840
lessons can be learned. It’s just a matter of our deployment has less

1620
01:42:50,840 –> 01:42:54,594
lively left lives at stake. Although, I mean if you have a 50,

1621
01:42:54,646 –> 01:42:58,080
000 person company that goes under now, you have 50, 000 people unemployed,

1622
01:42:58,240 –> 01:43:02,040
those lives are, those lives are at stake. So yeah, you know, you still got

1623
01:43:02,040 –> 01:43:05,870
to think about from a leadership perspective. And, and I think the other thing is,

1624
01:43:06,190 –> 01:43:09,790
you know, we saw it to your point about the communication and, and

1625
01:43:09,790 –> 01:43:13,150
how communication was impacted in World War I

1626
01:43:13,950 –> 01:43:17,630
warfare today. That’s just not the same. It’s not the same. Like

1627
01:43:17,630 –> 01:43:21,030
we learned, we learned lessons from that, that, that we basically said that is never

1628
01:43:21,030 –> 01:43:24,670
going to happen to us ever again. And again. If you look at, at

1629
01:43:24,830 –> 01:43:28,510
companies that have been around for a significantly late

1630
01:43:28,510 –> 01:43:31,880
leg of time, I’m thinking like the Hudson Bay Company that started in the

1631
01:43:31,880 –> 01:43:35,400
1800s, that is still in existence today. It’s a little bit different. I know, don’t,

1632
01:43:35,400 –> 01:43:38,440
don’t come at me. I understand that it looks a little different today, but the

1633
01:43:38,440 –> 01:43:41,440
foundation of that company still exists. The, you know, the

1634
01:43:41,840 –> 01:43:45,640
telecommunications company that sprung up with Ma Bell and you know,

1635
01:43:45,640 –> 01:43:49,440
things like that. Like companies that have been around, what is it? Rockport

1636
01:43:49,520 –> 01:43:52,400
and some of these other companies that have been around for literally over a century.

1637
01:43:52,800 –> 01:43:56,320
You think they do business the exact same way they did after World War. No.

1638
01:43:56,580 –> 01:44:00,420
They like their entire business models have changed things. They’ve adapted,

1639
01:44:00,420 –> 01:44:04,140
they’ve shown that same level of adaptability and which is why they’ve been around 100

1640
01:44:04,140 –> 01:44:07,780
plus years. So it’s, it’s, there’s a, there’s

1641
01:44:07,780 –> 01:44:11,620
mirrors involved in military tactics and military

1642
01:44:12,100 –> 01:44:15,620
strategies to corporate tactics and strategies.

1643
01:44:15,620 –> 01:44:18,980
There’s direct correlations to how these things work between.

1644
01:44:19,380 –> 01:44:23,020
Again, next man up we talked about like, so you get a, you get a

1645
01:44:23,020 –> 01:44:26,730
great sales manager, leads a great sales team. He quits because, because he gets offered

1646
01:44:26,730 –> 01:44:30,490
a VP of sales somewhere else and you got a next man up, you, somebody

1647
01:44:30,490 –> 01:44:33,730
has to take their place. So you gotta just, you move it and you’re not

1648
01:44:33,730 –> 01:44:37,370
gonna, you’re not gonna stop the ship because one person jumps ship.

1649
01:44:37,530 –> 01:44:40,210
You’ve got to figure out a way to move the wheel, to move the needle,

1650
01:44:40,210 –> 01:44:43,530
to keep the cog moving. And, you know, and having those

1651
01:44:44,170 –> 01:44:47,770
again, In World War I, it was one of the first instances of, like,

1652
01:44:48,170 –> 01:44:51,810
that you. You have to have the backup plan. Right?

1653
01:44:51,810 –> 01:44:55,550
Because plan, Plan one, if it fails, we

1654
01:44:55,550 –> 01:44:59,310
need to know what we’re doing. We can’t be. We can’t fail and then regroup.

1655
01:44:59,310 –> 01:45:02,950
And in an environment like World War I, you can’t just say,

1656
01:45:02,950 –> 01:45:06,270
oh, just go for it, and we’ll see what happens. And if it fails, we’ll

1657
01:45:06,270 –> 01:45:09,710
regroup and we’ll decide what. That. What to do next. That. That’s. That is not

1658
01:45:09,710 –> 01:45:13,470
a thing. Again, from a corporate perspective, you have to have. You have to be

1659
01:45:13,470 –> 01:45:17,190
at the ready of. For that kind of. That kind of thinking at the

1660
01:45:17,190 –> 01:45:19,910
same time. So I think there’s a lot of lessons we can learn from World

1661
01:45:19,910 –> 01:45:23,450
War I that we could move into the corporate world.

1662
01:45:23,770 –> 01:45:27,490
Excellent. Well, with that, I’d like to thank

1663
01:45:27,490 –> 01:45:31,210
Tom Libby for coming on our show today and joining me. Always a pleasure.

1664
01:45:31,610 –> 01:45:34,570
Always my pleasure. All right. With that, well,

1665
01:45:35,770 –> 01:45:36,410
we’re out.