Leadership Is Simple But Difficult, with COL(R) Jay Powers

Jay: my biggest takeaway from my time reflecting back in the military was this idea I call it the paradox of leadership. That it's simple but difficult.

Spencer: All right, Aaron. Well, here we are again, man. Again, we are sitting in front of, one of the quality people in my life, and just blessed, honored, that Colonel Retired Jay Powers is joining us today. my first memories of Jay was that, um, walking into a weight room and looking over and go, "Now, those dumbbells are way too big for the size of that human being." And, that guy was over there curling, 80-pound dumbbells, and I was like, "Who the heck is that guy? And how is he throwing this weight around?" I, I was simply amazed by Jay Powers at West Point as a classmate of mine. I was always amazed, Jay, by your discipline. I remember my hair on fire. We had a physics test coming up, and I was running from one term end back to my room to go study, and Jay had his weight belt in his hands He had chalk on his hands, and he was coming back from the weight room. I'm like, "Dude, how are you working out in the middle of term end week?" And he's like, "Dude, you gotta prioritize. You gotta prioritize. I'll have this body forever. These tests will come and go." And Aaron, I'd be like, it's just discipline. Discipline is freedom, as Jocko would say, right? So Jay has always, has always been very disciplined. Has always shown me, that he's a guy to be trusted. has always shown me an inner discipline that I think is hard for most people So, he left West Point, and I knew he was gonna be a tremendous infantryman because Jay, and you'll remember this, But competed together against, Mike Cerniauskas and Rich Anselmi at Lake Popolopen. And we were very close to winning that whole thing, Aaron, a little squad, a little two-man competition. Jay showed me who he was that day. I was under a big oil check, but Jay, strong, always strong, and very impressive. that was a good summer for me, Jay. But when we graduated, he went right into the infantry, and, I chose aviation, Jay. and I still-- I wish I coulda done both. wish I coulda joined in the infantry but also done aviation as well. You launched off in the 101st after IOBC and, Ranger school and all the rest. and you joined a group of all-stars. I didn't realize you were mentioning Pat Work was in your, company, Doug Walters, the likes of Satch Saunders, some real heroes out there. Lieutenant Colonel Odom was smart enough to recruit you guys from West Point and then welcome you in the battalion that he had taken over. he left the regular Army and went into Special Operations. that's a big deal. to make that leap, because there's some risk in this. You're gonna invest a lot, going to the Special Forces assessment and, it may not work out. Even just going into the qualification course, that's a long chance. I would have bet on you, Jay. And I'm proud that you bet on yourself because it meant nothing but success. You went into Fifth Special Forces Group. and then you ran the whole dang thing. The Fifth Special Forces Group commander, if I could have at Camp Buckner one day said, "Hey, Jay, one day you're gonna be the Fifth Special Forces Group commander," we probably would have both laughed out loud,

Jay: sure

Spencer: just because we thought that dude was so old, but also we thought that guy was a real badass since he's left the Army, Aaron, he's done a lot of great stuff. he's teaching leadership at University of Southern Florida? And then also has done some leadership work at, University of Tampa as well. Has worked as a chief operating officer with Tampa Bay Wave, which is a great entrepreneurial organization for the community, You are the owner of, and we wanna talk about this more, Legion Consulting, and then you're also the owner of, D1 Training. You just launched a facility if I had to have somebody in charge of, my workouts then Jay Powers is the right guy to own a D1 Training, So Busy as ever. Got two boys that are out of the house, and, his wife Cher, such a wonderful lady, A family that my family really enjoys to be around, a person that I seek advice from all the time. So, welcome Colonel Retired Jay Powers, MacArthur Award winner 2002, Phoenix Award winner 2024. Jay, I'll turn it over to you, for some opening comments, man

Jay: I'm grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation just because I think leadership is just such a fantastic topic. it's great for continuous improvement because there's no such thing as the perfect leader. all still learning. I'm certainly trying to learn every day. I've, had the benefit of being surrounded by a lot of great leaders that I've been able to learn from. but I just love talking about it because, know, leadership as a subject has so much impact on people. know, any leader, a teacher, a, a parent, a- as a leader, you probably have the biggest impact on people's day anything around them. And so because of the impact, I just think it's worth spending time on

Spencer: let's follow that vein of gold, I'm telling you, Aaron, because the thing I failed to mention is the thing that Jay is probably most passionate about right now, and that is the coach of wrestling at Plant High School.

Jay: it's one of many things I'm passionate about, but I do love it and,

Spencer: Okay

Jay: give it up 'cause I love it so much.

Spencer: before we get there, Jay, I wanna know this. you just said we have to lead ourselves. your parents could be a leader, a coach could be a leader, your commander could be a leader. I wanna start with how do you lead yourself? And I wanna know young Jay Powers, pre West Point, through West Point, through all your challenges, how have you done it, man? How have you, stayed honest to yourself about what you wanted to do? Because th- I think that's one of your superpowers is that inner strength of you're working out when I think we should all be studying

Jay: I have always enjoyed being challenged. I think, know, one of the things that's helped me most throughout life is being surrounded by just amazing people that inspire me. That's one of the best things about being at West Point was you're just surrounded by incredible people. including you. people say often that you become like the people you're surrounded by, that was gr- what was great about West Point is I was surrounded by incredibly capable, determined people. and just being in that environment helped me get better every day just 'cause I was surrounded by excellence. and that's kind of been my growth path then as well. know, I went into the infantry because I wanted the challenge. I wanted to be surrounded by people that were gonna ask to go to Ranger School. And by, collaborating and working on a team with people like Pat Work and Doug Walter, you get better every day just being surrounded by those people. then, I was looking for another challenge, so I went to Special Forces and then again, I'm surrounded by all these people that

Spencer: ask

Jay: more of themselves and had to rise to different challenges. And I... It's not like I had one particular person that really developed me. It was this environment of capable people and just trying to fit into that kind of environment has been a great growth tool for me

Aaron: I was going to ask because, um, I'd recently had a conversation with somebody, they were asking me, why is it that, certain people spend so much time, studying leadership reading about it? I was talking to them about the book that Spencer and I, have been working on. And, it was interesting because I was like, man, why wouldn't you want to think about this? all of the ways that I can imagine trying to get better in my life come from, wanting to be at least a better person. But I think that that's also part of leadership is that, as Spencer was alluding to, is that, there's a bit of a, a leadership responsibility towards yourself. I do want to ask what is it that people can learn generally speaking that makes them live a better life? that's one of the big questions is like, why do we do this? Why do we talk about it? Why do we study it so much?

Jay: for me, I think it's constantly finding examples that you wanna follow, and those examples can come from a book, right? Or they're people that you're around, either way. it's like you see these people and you're, and you think, "I wanna be more like that. Let me take pieces of that. I wanna try to emulate that." And then you see bad examples and you say to yourself, "Well, I wanna be not like that." But constantly going through life and trying to mold yourself to be more like these people that inspire you and less like people that maybe frustrate you or demotivate you. it's not like a lightning strike that any one single thing turns you on. It's more like water molding a rock, like constantly shaping you by constantly trying to emulate people that are good leaders and constantly trying to steer away from bad examples. And again, I feel like I've been fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of people that emulating.

Spencer: Yeah. Yeah, but the whole lead by example, you think, you hear that all the time. we've recently been on one of the podcasts. Well, you know Todd Howard.

Jay: Yep

Spencer: and we were talking about lead by example, and what that really means is you're setting standards, you're setting, what I would call relative prices in the leadership economics terms, but it's basically, framing trade-offs that, to do this correctly, you show up on time. To do this correctly, you do a correct repetition. But every time you invest into, something, it's gonna cost you. And for anything to be valuable, it's probably gonna be costly. last I checked, they're not handing out Green Berets, that stuff's hard to do, and it takes a special person that self-selects into those organizations. You were alluding to that, just the action of saying, "I'm going into the infantry," just the action of saying, "I want to be an Airborne Ranger, I want to be Special Forces," is a signal. It removes, asymmetries of information and provides some truth. Aaron and I talk about eliciting truth, in making good decisions. the path you have taken has not been the easy path, I would think that on the mats at Plant High School, you're not starting the story with "Let me tell you how easy we're gonna have it, boys." you're starting the story with, "All I can promise you is blood, sweat, and tears." You know, like, Winston Churchill fashion. and if you're not here for that, then you may wanna find a new, place to spend your time.

Aaron: what I really like is the idea of, being self-critical and having that awareness of who you are and the gap between who you are currently and who you want to be. but deciding or piecing together that vision of who you want to be is not easy. Y- you can't just conjure it up in your imagination. you need to see it either... in media, books, or the people around you. And, one of the things we spend a lot of time talking about is how people have a certain objective function, right? we call it this production function, but the idea is that in everything you're doing, you're seeking after some sort of a goal. and, what's useful here is, taking the time to actually define what that is or being aware of what you are trying to, obtain, and a lot of that is having clear visualization of, or examples of people and the lives they live that you would like to, emulate. So, I find that to be just a very useful way of recognizing that the reason we talk about this, the reason this matters to a lot of people is that you need to be aware of your thought process and what you're looking at and what you're trying to emulate

Jay: you said in talking with Todd Howard the importance of leading by example. I teach a leadership class, about foundations of leadership that's integrity, respect for others, accepting responsibility and setting the example. And so you mentioned setting the example, but the theme I have is that those things don't make you a good leader. They're foundations. Like you have to do those things to set the foundation for people to trust you and inspire them. They don't make you a good leader. but my biggest takeaway from my time reflecting back in the military was this idea I call it the paradox of leadership. That it's simple but difficult. and that you made me think of that when you said setting the example. how often do you hear that? Everybody says that all the time, set the example. The idea is super simple, but how many times do leaders not do that? All the time. Right? And, and you know, I've seen the thing where the best way to influence people is through your actions, what you measure, what you decide, and lastly, what we say. one is most influence- most influential is what we do. And, and that's super basic and people fall short on it all the time. And so that's the challenge of leadership is not knowing. I think there's something like 6,000 leadership books written a year. the challenge is not knowing what makes good leadership, it's actually doing it

Spencer: Yeah. Just because it's, simple doesn't make it easy, right?

Jay: Exactly.

Aaron: like even in the smaller things, when I'm, in a meeting that someone's put together, and if there's one of my leaders that's not paying attention or having side conversations, I don't think it's a big deal because, sometimes you're busy or whatever. But in hindsight, I think sometimes it, it shows what the priority is. is the priority of this meeting what we're talking about now, or is the priority somewhere else? and as Spencer said, I think that, When we say, lead by example, I think a lot of it is what are you showing is the priority right now?

Spencer: And you can set yourself up for failure, right, Jay? Like, if you say one thing, you've established a contract, that's the start of it. But to actually seal the contract, it's what you do. And saying one thing and doing another, man, that can provide some serious information. And we don't take hypocrisy well. you

Jay: people Remember it forever. I remember working with a company, and an employee talking to me about how five years previously the CEO had emphasized the importance of attending a team building event and then didn't show up. it was five years prior, and they still were like, "So that's what that person's about." what seems like a very innocuous thing, who knows what came up, whatever. But to your point, they had said one thing, that it was important, and then their actions displayed different. and five years later, that person still remembered that difference

Spencer: Jay, let me ask you this. So I'm still in touch with my high school football coach. I love coaches. I think coaches change lives and you're doing a piece of this right now. Coaches change lives. My high school football coach, he texts me every morning with a little, some wisdom. sometimes spiritual, sometimes otherwise, but Coach Morrow texts me every morning, and I love it. you'd love him, man. Him and his squirrel dog, they out there running squirrels on a little swampy area behind Hilltop over here. You would love this guy. He's such a great man.

Jay: I already do

Spencer: But he told me at lunch... he scares me that he's out there by himself, but he thinks his dog, Molly, is gonna save him, whatever reason. I'm like, "Coach, keep your phone near me. Call me if something goes bad, I can come get you." anyway, what he told me, and this is really interesting, I wanna know how you feel about this, is that we were talking about high school years as a football player, and he said, "You know, you guys were willing to accept the pain." That we were willing to put in the work. you're a guy where I'm always like, you can always count on Jay to be one of the last guys. He's gonna give you everything he's got. You know what I mean? You're leaving it on the mat. if you're not willing to accept that, the pain, the training, and you're not self-selecting to elite special forces or whatever, how do you motivate a young person who maybe is, resistant to pushing their limits because their limits are so constrained that they can't even get the best out of themselves? Like, how do you force somebody into becoming marginally excellent to, to receive the training,

Jay: I think, you know, all of us in whatever we wanna do, there's some kind of maximum level for us, a theoretical level, right? That if we just did everything right would be our best possible performance. could be in sports, but it could be in leadership or, how we could perform our best possible. But everybody's somewhat short of that. maybe not Michael Phelps or people like that, but just about everybody falls somewhat short of their potential. how can you help people get closer to their ultimate potential? and it's hard because like you said, a lot of it takes self-discipline and it's about effort. Aaron, you talked about having goals and vision for yourself and like a goal with, steps that you take action, that's a goal. Without action and steps towards it, it's just a wish. And, and wishes don't really come true. it's action that gets you to goals. and so it's how can you break things down to somebody to take small steps so they can start building get towards what their goals are. But I see that all the time, know, you could see a wrestler that says they wanna achieve this level, but their actions are different, you know? If you wanna be a state champion, well, you gotta work really, really, really hard. but saying you wanna be a state champion and not working all summer, well, those two things just don't align

Spencer: Aaron, when we talk about this like a goal, it is a future vision. Leaders, Aaron would tell you that leaders create something that does not exist now. It's a future. It's uncertain, there is an actual that will fall out, and there's an expected. And where those things are different, there's gonna be some marginal distance. You said just short of their ultimate potential, like ultimate potential meaning like you're just short of it. how do you bridge that marginal difference? who knows what it is. But, I agree totally there.

Jay: Your ultimate potential would be like you spent every waking minute perfectly aligning your actions to get to your potential. The most sleep, eating properly, training, studying, whatever you're trying to get to. If you used every moment to its maximum potential to get you to where you could possibly get

Spencer: Right. No, I totally agree. I think you're right. Most of us are way short of it, and,

Jay: way short

Spencer: when I see somebody pass out, like fall to the ground, when they pass out, at least their mind was strong enough to get them to a physical failure. You know what I mean? Like, the lady, I can't remember her name, but she, one of the first people to run an Olympic marathon, and she passed out, and she wouldn't let anybody help. She's like trying to get up and do her own. But that kind of mental capacity to be displayed physically, like how much are you willing to give? Well, I'm gonna keep falling and I'm gonna get up. Like, that display of actions there, is tremendous, and most of us don't have that. But trying to get somebody to get there, it's like this slight maneuvering of the mirror, like showing them like, "Hey, dude, this is what actually happens, but this is what you're saying." You're wishing, and then there's wanting. Wishing makes for a great movie. but

Jay: Yeah

Spencer: if you really want it, then, you gotta be feasible, too. Like, hey, I'm probably not gonna dunk a basketball, it's probably not gonna happen, at this point in my life. So it has to be feasible as well. But

Jay: Yeah

Spencer: trying to push somebody to that next limit, I think is something that a leader can do. That's what I'm wondering, how does that leader make me better than what I would have been on my own?

Jay: know, that's a tough question, and I think it gets a little bit to what Aaron was talking about, is helping people see it from a vision so that they're willing to take the steps necessary to get there. And it's also by surrounding people collectively, so it's not just the leader, right? It's the vision for the group one person trying to influence you is less effective than a collective group all going in one direction, like people wanna go with the group to creating the vision and the buy-in for the whole group is most effective in doing that

Spencer: I think I would be remiss, Aaron, if we didn't talk about it. We graduate West Point in '95. The Balkans are going on a little bit. I was at the Marine Amphibious Warfare School on September 11, 2001. But, Jay was in an isolation facility, an ISOFAC, training with a team for possible real world events, but who would have known September 11 was gonna happen, Jay, we talk about the uncertainty and ambiguity. uncertainty meaning, there are possible outcomes that are available, I just don't know which one it's gonna be. And then there are ambiguous situations where who knows what's gonna happen. I don't even understand how things are connected or what outcomes we're gonna face. And I can only imagine in your mind at that time, 'cause I think you were, you were leading a team of 12 men at that point as Special Forces in, in 5th Special Forces Group. what does your head do when you receive the information about 9/11 and all the uncertainties and everything you're gonna face? can you just relive that a little bit for us? And then w- I'm falling back onto you had a team around you, and what does that affect?

Jay: we were doing a training exercise because we were already scheduled to deploy at the end of September on a contingency mission. ever since, the first Gulf War, they kept a company of Special Forces forward in Kuwait as a reaction force. So we were getting ready to deploy on that mission, and we were doing our final certification exercise to say that we were ready to deploy. And I was in the operations center, and I was on a sniper team, and I had the team going in to, establish positions in overwatch, for the mission. And I remember someone coming in and saying, "Hey, you gotta turn on the TV." And I turn on the TV, and I see that first tower burning and people jumping to their death to get out and escape the flames. And of course, like everybody else, I mean, it's just shocked, you know, what a terrible accident. And so we watch for a little while, but, you know, people infiltrating, they don't know that's happening, we gotta get back to the exercise. So we turn off the TV, and then, someone comes back in and says, "Turn the TV back on. It wasn't an accident. We're under attack." even when I say that right now, I still get goosebumps at the feeling of when someone came in and said that. And so we turn the TV back on, and, uh, like everybody else, know, in the world probably were watching it. But the exercise was quickly canceled and, our previous orders were canceled. And at first, we were on just standby, but we kind of knew, being in a unit that was regionally oriented on the Middle East, that was already prepared to deploy anyway and that had a counterterrorism focus, we knew there was a pretty good chance that we would be involved in the reaction. so we had to wait for a little bit

Spencer: Yeah

Jay: Like you said, the unknowns and the ambiguity were just overwhelming. I mean, you didn't even know, what's gonna happen next week. And like everyone else, were there gonna be other attacks? And what happened is pretty shortly thereafter, we got new orders to deploy, still as a contingency force, but over to the Middle East to react if there was any other attacks on US interests. and what I remember is when we got those orders, you know, when you go overseas in the military, they give you a piece of paper that says how long you're gonna be gone for, when you have to be back by, what mission you're supporting. and those initial orders that we got in the upper right-hand corner said indefinite. There was no redeployment time. and so talk about, unknowns. The talk on the team was this was gonna be like World War II. We're just gonna go over and, fight until the fighting's done, and we have no idea how long that's gonna be or when, or even if we might come home. most of the teams, know, most of the guys had families, and so it's like, you know, I don't know how my family's gonna endure this. Um, there was a lot of emotions and, some of them were anxiety, stress, wondering what this is gonna turn into. but there were also positive ones, resolve and determination to go make a difference, to make sure this doesn't happen again. and one of the things that I think, was most impressive is that with all those unknowns and the obvious danger and the impact on families, everybody wanted to go. I mean the worst thing that could happen to someone at that point was to be left behind. reflecting back on it, I take great pride to have been in an organization surrounded by people with that difficult of a situation that everybody said, "Send me." and that's largely what the military is made up of, of people that, that do that

Spencer: The end-def, it's so weird. At one point on a rotation, 2008, '9, I don't know when it was, but I just like, I, after going through that a few times, we've been there for a while, you know, like, "Hey, where's our Berlin or Tokyo?" Like, how do you win this thing?

Jay: yeah.

Spencer: even measuring the outcome. But, At that point, you're indef.and, that's the worst of workouts, right? How many laps are we doing? not knowing how many laps you gotta run, that's the worst thing you could do to somebody. "How many times have I gotta go around this thing?" Well, we don't know, end-def.

Jay: I, I never thought of it until you just said that, and, that's a big part of Special Forces selection, is you get a lot of tasks, almost all the tasks, you don't know what the end

Spencer: Yes

Jay: You don't know how far you're running, you don't know how far you're carrying something. That's one of the things you're constantly challenged with. So that's, interesting. Yes, we did. We were short some people, so they filled us out so we had a full team, when we went into Afghanistan, that's the other thing I remember that was just the unknowns were ch- extraordinary. Again, not knowing how long we were gonna be there, exactly what we're gonna do. We were sometimes using old Russian maps. it was so different from missions when you knew how long you were gonna be gone for, where all the operational bases were, where medevacs were, where you could get a quick reaction force. we knew nothing when we got to Afghanistan, and we were just figuring it all out every single day. And, uh, that was a challenge and that, know, like you said, it was a challenge mentally when there's so much that's unknown

Spencer: I'm gonna turn it over to Aaron here because we've talked about this a lot. this comes to, kind of the heart of leadership economics, and the graduate level really, 'cause you can measure marginal benefits and marginal costs and pick marginal beneficial ways and keep that greater than your cost. That seems very easy. The reality is most things are uncertain. And, what I'm wondering is did you ever feel paralyzed that you couldn't make a decision or did you ever feel, "I'm making this decision, but if I had better information, I may have chose a different pathway looking back on it"? Like this becomes the problem with an allocation in a very uncertain and ambiguous environment I'm sure you made plenty decisions where you didn't have enough information

Jay: Yeah, I mean, I would say probably all-- almost every decision you wish you had more and better information. but that's just the way life works. I feel like, so often, you know, the Nike motto, "Just do it," is just, such an important reflection on life. You just gotta do it and the information's not right, and you just do the best you can. every day just go forward with the best you can do

Aaron: what's interesting is how hard that is, some people really need to know everything about a decision before they make it. and I think that's a lot of this, aversion to the ambiguity in life. but what also strikes me is how, when you say that you often were doing tasks or challenges or things that you didn't actually know what the end was, over and over again, we've found or learned from people how, in training for Special Forces, a lot of it is about developing, this resilience to the ambiguity and being able to know that you're going to, be able to face whatever is coming down the pike for you. so, that's just one more example that I really love is that, if you're carrying heavy equipment somewhere and you don't actually know where it's gonna end up, this is all part of that training in a way of being able to deal with the fact that you're still gonna be acting and moving forward even if you don't know what the end state's gonna look like.

Jay: that was one of the, the neat things about being in special operations. You're just surrounded by people that kind of crave the ambiguity because of the opportunity it creates them, the empowerment it creates them to find their own way, to find their own solution to solve the problem. and being around those people was just a great developmental opportunity remember being in, uh, in Syria talking to this, team sergeant, and we were gonna move from the l- the outpost we were at, he went over real quick and talked to the Syrians and gave them a whole bunch of, instructions in Arabic. and after he finished, I was like, "Hey, that's great. I love to see a team sergeant who can, can converse like that and give directions. You're, that's setting a great example." And he said, uh, thanks, but I'm not an Arabic speaker." was like, "What?" He said, "Yeah, I'm a French speaker." you know, because everyone has an assigned language. and I said, well how'd you get so good at, Arabic?" And he said, "Well, on my first deployment, I was in Yemen, and my team sergeant at that time told me to go over and train these Yemenis on, shooting. And I turned to my team sergeant," this is him talking, and he said, "I don't speak Arabic. I'm a French teacher." And his team sergeant said, "Well, I told you go over and teach those guys how to shoot. I didn't say anything about what language. Go teach those guys how to shoot." And he's like, "I guess I better figure out how to speak Arabic." And so they go, that was 10 years prior, and now he's still officially a French speaker, but he's like, "I gotta just figure this out. I gotta be able to communicate with people." And so now here he is 10 years later, I mean sounding fluent, telling these Syrians what they need to do and their security instructions before he leaves. It was awesome, and a great example of a guy who's just like, "I'm gonna figure this out." And, at the time, his leadership expecting that of him, just not giving him the how to do it, just telling him, "Hey, you gotta figure this out."

Spencer: Yeah That's awesome Well, what I was wondering, in that initial deployment, I know there was a lot of confusion going on, during that timeframe and, how you were measuring success versus the resources you were throwing at the problem. I'm sure you guys were learning very quickly, like what worked, what didn't work, and how it progressed you towards that goal, like on the execution side of it, and I think being small enough in a team, that becomes real easy, the communication is easier even if it's in two different language and you gotta figure it out. that's obviously very hard. but empowering the people to act on their behalf and giving the responsibility to act, when you can see it, which is a lot different than being the fifth group commander, right? Like that's a lot different task, but you've seen it from top to bottom. how do you get better at the lowest level first, and then how do you get your intent down to the lowest level when you're a group commander?

Jay: Yeah, I mean, I, I love that subject. I really try to, as a team leader, those lessons learned early days in Afghanistan are very tactical, I mean, how effectively could we secure a location? Could we, win the close fight? very tactical objectives. I had NCO sergeants that, were frankly better than me, more experienced in a lot of those tactics. And so I was learning from them I, did the best I could to employ the team. but that's was part of my approach, was to listen and learn and, try to create a collaborative environment. And I think one of the biggest challenges in leadership is that as you go become more senior and get more responsibility and the size of the organization expands, that communication gets so much more difficult. there's a great picture that I like to use when talking about this, and you can just envision it. It shows a number of connections in a triangle. There's three connections, and then you go to a square, and then you keep going to bigger and bigger polygons, and I think by the time you get to a 14-sided polygon, there's 91 connections. and that's 14, which is still a relatively small organization. So then you think of an organization of 100. I don't know what the number is. It's, it's huge. So as an organization grows, the number of connections in that organization just expands so fast, which makes communication much more difficult. to your point on making sure everybody understands the vision is going the same direction. And I think because that's so difficult, that's why sometimes people will feel like they're good at communicating, then as they get more senior, they struggle because the complexity and the challenge of the task, you could take it for granted on how you were able to communicate on a, a team or an organization of 10 people. And then when you get an organization of 100, like the same things simply don't work. what you could take for granted, it's very easy for 10 people to have shared understanding and know the direction you're going, where when you get to 100 or 1,000, it's infinitely more difficult. Almost no matter how hard you try, somebody s- have all the information. and so one, it takes a ton of repetition. It, takes a lot of focused effort. I could, I mean, I could share tons of stories about this going wrong. I remember when I was a group commander, I had three focus priorities. one was taking care of people, one was winning the current fight, 'cause we were in Syria, and the other was innovating. and I really believed on having clear priorities and emphasizing them. So those were my three priorities. I talked about them all the time. I set up ways to get input and direct those, and I felt like we were getting organized in that way. And I used to use Wednesdays as a no meeting day to go walk around, visit training, talk to people, see what was going on. And I was doing that with s- what some of my other senior leaders, and we ran into, a guy who was a junior leader but in a key position. And we were talking to him, and in the conversation I somehow mentioned innovation and, his feedback was like, "Yeah, innovation, I heard something about that. Like, what's the deal with innovation?" And it became crystal clear that he had no idea what my priorities were, despite all the effort I'd been trying to put. Word hadn't gotten to him and, my failure as a leader to communicate effectively to get it down to every person. it's really hard and you just gotta put so much effort into it. You could think of it in a small boat. If you got people rowing a boat, if everybody's rowing together, the boat really moves out. But soon as one person sticks their oar in at off time, know, the boat's not going as fast. And if a whole bunch of people start putting their oars in at the different time, hell, the boat could start going backwards. and that's like leading an organization and the importance of having everybody the direction, the priorities and go. And it is, truly a challenge the bigger the organization gets

Aaron: Yeah, it seems like part of the difficulty is, the complexity of the instruction or the focus. the higher up you go and the lower down you're trying to get the information, it seems like it just has to keep getting simpler and simpler. I, just, I wonder, were there not, like, emails this kid was reading, or were there...

Jay: Yeah, there's just so much to it,

Aaron: Anyway, it's just, it's

Jay: was, four or five echelons, right? That the information had to get to. But the information has to get there or everybody's not gonna be doing the same thing. I think one of the challenges of leaders is, and it comes back to priorities, and you guys talk allocation, I think that's the same thing, is, as a leader deciding what's truly most important to focus on. And I think the bigger the organization, there's a tendency to focus on too many things, to try to do everything. e- especially to have a s- high standard of excellence for everything. and clearly excellence is important, but when you focus on everything, I can think of lots of leaders and being organizations, when, when they leave, if you ask them, "What did that leader change? What's the big difference they made?" you, you don't really know. we just worked hard the whole time. And, but what, to what end? Like, know. A, a thousand little things that really don't necessarily add up to anything. the really genius leaders on a few things, and then everybody knows that's what they're going after. And I'll tell you the best example that I experienced of that was Admiral McRaven when he took over SOCOM. 70,000 people. I was a major, so I was a, low to mid-level leader. and um, had you asked me before what we were doing, I'd probably could've come up with lots of things, but they wouldn't have been really focused. And when he got there, I could tell you exactly what we were doing. He was, "These three things." he built teams to focus on those three things, and he had the whole organization. And there was lots of other stuff that happened, he was crystal clear on, "These are the three things that I wanna make a difference on." And, to me, he was a great example of that on, you really make a difference when you're able to prioritize. and it's the old saying, you know, you're truly prioritizing, not by saying something's important, but by saying something else is not important, cause that frees up resources to go to what is important

Spencer: Aaron, you said priorities are allocations. Jay, what we would argue or what economics will tell you is that there is scarcity in the world. Therefore, you have to prioritize your scarce resources and allocate them efficiently towards the goals you want.

Jay: Yeah

Spencer: the allocation is really the action that you're talking about. when Aaron's saying before that you're looking at your phone when I'm trying to have your attention, you're telling me, that your attention is more appropriately placed on your phone than it is to what I'm saying, and that's a clear signal of, uh, your priorities, right? the geniuses of the world get everybody rowing in the same direction, and create a shared understanding of the prioritization, therefore the allocations of the scarce resources. Admiral McRaven to me, I agree, was one of the folks that cleaned up the battlefield for information as to what was important and where was our Berlin or Tokyo, what success looked like, how do we measure it, and then how do I allocate my scarce resources towards the outcomes that he has clearly stated for us. And the-- and we in economics, it's called a principal agent problem. The principal being the group commander, the agent being that young captain that you ran into that hadn't heard of innovation, there's a distance there, Yeah. So Pat Work sat in our class, and you'll love this comment. Pat said, "At some point, your soldiers don't recognize your voice in the dark." And that's a great comment, right? Like, as a brigade commander, he felt like they wouldn't recognize what you're saying.

Jay: Yeah

Spencer: it's a challenge. That's a real challenge.

Jay: When you're close to someone, it's much easier to build trust 'cause you see what they care about, they see their actions. And as you get further away, it's harder to build that trust. f- and then people will, I think, generally negative assumptions when they don't know. So the challenge is as a leader is that distance gets greater, is you gotta really be deliberate on explaining like your intent, why you're doing things. 'Cause what you'll see is a leader's inner circle will think very highly of them because they can see them and touch them, and they know, know, what matters to them. But then as you get further out from that circle, people oftentimes lose that trust and confidence because they don't have the same access. And if that leader isn't being deliberate on and putting a lot of effort into explaining that stuff, then just people make up their own, their own conclusions, if they're making it up, is typically more negative

Spencer: Yeah

Jay: I love this subject allocation. know, I like to think in terms of resources. People are an organization's most important resource. So for an organization, how they allocate people is incredibly important. And then at the individual level, time is your most important resource, how you allocate your time. And leader development is so important because when you do leader development, you're investing your personally most important resource into the organization's most important resource

Spencer: Leader's number one responsibility, create more leaders

Jay: and again, that's, commonly said and uncommonly done, you know? And you can evaluate it. You go back and look at your calendar and as a leader and be like, "Okay, the most important thing a leader does is develop other leaders. How much time did I do this week doing that?" You know, you can evaluate yourself, and I think it's a good example of one of the things that's easy to understand and say, but difficult to do because you've gotta prioritize that. You gotta allocate your time over all these other things that are being put in front of you it's the easiest thing to cancel because when you cancel or reallocate your time from leader development, it doesn't really affect anybody but you and the person you are gonna spend time with or the group of people. and you might actually get more done that day. You might check off more things on your to-do list than you would've had you spent time on leader development. but leader development is like a rock in a pond.

Spencer: Mm-hmm.

Jay: You don't know where those ripples are gonna end. You know, you don't know that they might go all the way across the pond, hit that other bank, and that leader is then gonna invest in somebody else, who's gonna invest in somebody else, who's gonna make a difference in a future leader. you can't see that when you spend the time, but that's the kind of impact you have when you allocate your time to leader development

Aaron: And that also seems to be part of this issue of communicating down, right? if that circle of people that the leader has close to them really develops, an appreciation and an understanding of their leadership style and also gains in that trust and that, respect, I can imagine that also sort of trickles down to the next level of leadership if they can emulate that kind of, priority. And, what's hard about this a lot of the times is that especially as you go up and up and up in the leadership or your organization's growing, the number of different things that suddenly are on that leader's plate, the many different things that they could focus on or the things that they are focusing on from, a day-to-day basis, how do you for yourself deal with the fact that this is a very wide number of options that, that can take up every minute of your day? And so you not only have to prio- prioritize for yourself, the few things that are gonna be most crucial, then again, you have to be able to convey that down, the chain that I understand that, you know, you've got things that are very important, and we still need you to focus on that, but the priorities, the bigger priorities that we're pushing towards, are related to what you're doing, right? Like that's... I think that's what's hard is making sure people can understand that this is the priority and then also being able to see how the work I do on a daily basis is actually contributing towards that priority. if I were to tell, a whole team that our priority is just to get a lot of sales, but I didn't convey that the, design or the engineering department is part of that by making a good product that we can sell, like suddenly it's not about favoring one team over the other. It's about conveying that this is the priority, and here's your part in, reaching it. 'Cause again, that sort of... that helps narrow the scope of the things that they are focused on. Th- that communication, I hadn't really thought about how the, scale of the number of relationships you have to maintain, is exponential. Whereas, the number of people you're adding is just linear, right? Like it just goes.

Jay: Yeah

Aaron: that problem seems, to be part of the leader's ch- challenge, right?

Jay: it takes just constant, almost to the point of exhausting effort to continuously, especially the bigger the organization, continuously repeat yourself. 'Cause you just think when you got lots of people, somebody didn't read the email, somebody wasn't there when you put it out, somebody was there but they were daydreaming about their sick kid. So to get it through to everybody, is just really difficult and takes a lot of effort. To me, it's so important to think about power to-- prioritizing and,know, just in, in a business world, thinking about if you could go around and ask everybody, what's most important right now?" How many people would be able to answer that question? What's most important today?" And I would take what you were saying even on another level, Aaron. for some people, what they're working on actually might not contribute to that thing, especially in a bigger organization, that's most important. And that in itself is important to know, that what I'm doing, my role, is actually not the most important thing right now. So that if someone comes and asks me for something or takes my resources, I have to understand why that's happening and why that's okay, because what I'm doing is actually not the overall priority.

Spencer: Seriously. Like knowing you're the main effort and knowing you're a supporting effort, you really need to know how your oar fits into the water, you know? Jay. Aaron has leaned on economics, and the discipline is about creating, in free markets, creating best information for best allocations. And the way we do that in markets, consumers and producers, are alloc- making allocation decisions, but we have these prices that are in dollars or in a currency that, facilitates us both to know, what's most valuable because it has the highest price. And our incentive structures in the free markets are aligned to create the things that people demand, where it could become more costly to produce that thing, but as long as people want it, then the benefit is greater than the cost. So the information asymmetries are reduced in free markets. We call this decentralized operations or a flat organization, when we talk about organization behavior kind of theories. And, and that's just creating better information because you don't wanna be in that negative assumptions is the default, like you were saying. When there's a black hole, all blackness in my mind, I'm in a dark room, my mind goes crazy. we all go to negative thoughts. and that's why Aaron and I both kinda feel that economics does a good job in eliciting truth and getting to the right information. It's not easy. It's very challenging. I just wanna say this, and I'll lead us into, what I think we need to go a little bit, is that we work in first principles. We're trying to work in core economic principles that drive human decisions and human interaction If you remember the mission command philosophy, I've got the principles right here in front of me. They were competence, mutual trust, shared understanding, commander's intent, mission orders, disciplined initiative, and risk acceptance. I love those principles, and I think they're very good, and I think they work. I believe in, the mission command philosophy for the Army, and I love the looseness of the wording and the languages at time because you gotta fit that to every, context that you face. But I'm gonna go to your, Scaling Up certificate, the Legion Consulting and your work right now where you're taking all this leadership experience and applying it it's a growth model, and it has a very good framework, right? So Scaling Up is what you're using, and there are four critical pillars, out there, and the four that you have in Scaling Up is people, strategy, execution, and cash. And just like McRaven came in and simplified, just like you came in and simplified, sometimes you gotta get to that 10,000-foot hover to really see the map, It's hard when you're down in the trees flying nap of the earth. So how are you using that When you go to a business and those four pillars, people, strategy, execution, and cash, how are you translating all this into the Scaling Up, methodology?

Jay: I got to this because, I was initially really enjoying helping leaders as their organizations grew, their companies grew. with that success comes new frictions, new challenges. And a lot of times, right when people think things should be going better, they seem most difficult. And it really goes back to those complexities we talked about earlier as you take the triangle and get to more people. and so I enjoyed helping leaders through those challenges, and I shared that with Bob Verdun, who had recently bought Scaling Up. I had read the book, as part of my personal education after the Army, and he's like, "That's what we do at Scaling Up. you should Scaling

Spencer: Yeah.

Jay: Up coach." So I went through the certification process, and just really, really like the model. one, because it's focused on an underlying principle of discipline. And, it's interesting, discipline is associated with the military, Jim Collins is, you know, you're probably familiar books

Spencer: Yeah

Jay: Good to Great and Great by Choice, but his research shows that the really excel

Spencer: Good to Great

Jay: Really

Spencer: Yeah

Jay: are the ones that are disciplined. And that's an underlying theme in Scaling Up, is to be disciplined and it came from Verne Harnish wrote the book, but he got it from practical experience just watching companies struggle with growth. And what he saw is that their problems came in one of four areas or multiple: people, strategy, execution, and cash. So he developed tools, necessarily to tell you how to do those four things, but how to think through those problems and come up with your own solutions. and then there's three underlying disciplines that support it. it's the idea of having data, having priorities, and having a rhythm that help you make good decisions, and I just find that that is a very effective way to solve problems and grow organizations

Spencer: Man, I love that. Yeah, I, me and Aaron are working in principles, I think there's a lot of leadership theory out there, a lot of organizational behavior studies out there. Heck, this Scaling Up, methodology, really helping folks kinda unravel complexities in their lives. I like that it's, underlined discipline in it. that's interesting, to me. So now you're also opened up this D1, gym. How is that going on, man? are you incorporating any of this? Yeah

Jay: Yeah, for sure. what happened I really love helping leaders work through those problems and, it's really satisfying for me to help share something with somebody and see it be helpful. But what I found was I missed being in the huddle. know, I missed having the responsibility of leadership, and so I was looking to get myself back into that position, and I was interested in either acquiring a business or doing a franchise as a path towards that. I saw that was basically in the business world, business owners are the, commanders of the business world and I missed that. So I was looking, at either entrepreneurship through acquisition or franchising and I came across D1 and, It was something I had been super passionate about in the Army, you know. through the human performance effort, I saw what performance training did for soldiers, how it helped them perform so much better, helped them recover so much faster. And so the opportunity to work in a business and to bring that style of training to athletes ages seven and up was just really exciting to me. It gave me an opportunity to build a team, which is what I was missing, but building a team that was doing something really valuable. And so it's been a ton of fun.

Spencer: I love the idea that you miss the responsibility of, being in the huddle. I do believe that. You can become pretty cynical if you... I always say that, responsibility kind of pushes you off the cynical cloud. Like, you can, you can be a consultant all you want, but you're not responsible for anything. But actually being the leader, you're in charge of this D1 gym, you're running a business that has to incorporate all these ideas, but you're also, if we went back to where we were at at one point, is you're, forcing and pushing people, just beyond or just up to, hopefully, their ultimate potential in developing these, young men and women, and the service you guys are providing, And you're doing that at Plant High School. and you have all this, experience just to give back, is really impressive to me. Have you become reflective looking backwards? Is this pathway that you've been on, felt, fulfilling?

Jay: Well, yeah, I mean, my leadership journey, when I first West Point, I cared about being a good leader as my responsibility, but I honestly wasn't passionate about it. What I was passionate about was just challenging myself. And it was through experiences in the Army where I got to work in a couple units where they really empowered people, and I just came to this belief that if you create environment, an environment as a leader where people can thrive and be the best version of themselves, then the organization will really take off. And I found that to be inspiring to me, the challenge to create that type of environment. And so that became my approach to leadership for the best of my career, was to just try to create these environments where people could thrive and they could be their best and they could help the organization succeed. And, um, I still love doing that. know, I like through Scaling Up, I can, help business leaders doing that. I'm trying to create that at D1, and by creating that environment we're helping athletes get better and, I'm trying to do that for wrestling team, and I just find that a really, rewarding way to approach leadership

Spencer: I think you've done a tremendous job, and the relationships that you have, I always say leadership is a relationship, and, the depth of those relationships are so great. the depth of the friendships that, I know you have, the mentorship that you've had through so many folks out there, is important.

Aaron: the one thing that, from the beginning of this conversation, we had talked about it a little bit, and what's still hard for me is what, you know, what are the actual nuts and bolts of getting somebody to see and care about that gap between where they are and where they want to be? 'cause, everybody has these thoughts of like, oh, I wish, I was either wealthier or I had a bigger house or, that I was healthier. but there's always this gap, or there's very often a gap between seeing that that's what you want and then taking the steps every day to do it. And so as a coach, it seems like that really hard part of leadership that is difficult to define, but I wanted to give you a chance to at least give some thoughts on how do you get people to care about that gap?

Jay: Well, I mean, I, I got a number that leads me to a number of thoughts. One is the saying, you can't coach try. if someone doesn't care, I mean, you said the question on how do you make them care? And at the end of the day, it's pretty hard to force somebody to care. if they care, you can do a lot to help them get there, but if they don't care, that's kinda trying to push a, a wet noodle uphill. you can more descriptive and you can explain the gap, but at the end of the day, know, that's, to a certain degree, their role is to care, and you can help them get there. one of the questions we ask in Scaling Up in regards to people is, would you enthusiastically rehire everyone on your team? And this idea, one, as you work with someone, you get to know them better, right? In the hiring process, you never know perfectly. Once you work with someone, you get a better understanding. But also requirements change. In a small company, you need something different than in a big company. So even if they were a perfect fit, they might not be a perfect fit as you get to a bigger company. So asking yourself that question, "Would I enthusiastically rehire this person?" is a good way to force yourself into a candid look on whether or not you got the right person. And I think what you're asking about gets to that. Like, if they don't care about their own improvement, then I question, in most cases, whether or not you would enthusiastically rehire them

Aaron: Yeah, I mean, you can't force somebody to care or want to be in, say, the Special Forces, right? That's a group of people who chose to take on that hard task. And so, you can't force somebody to feel that way about it. I guess, part of the other thing here is that people always do have something that they care about, and hopefully sometimes there's a way help them see that what they want in life overlaps with what, either as a group or as a team you're trying to accomplish. and helping their individual concerns begin to align with what the organization is. But it's true. you can't take away, their sort of agency to decide on what's important in their life. So yeah, that's tricky

Spencer: Let me

Jay: don't work hard, I can't work hard for 'em. They gotta be willing to work hard

Spencer: I think I love the idea too. it would be very common, Aaron, if I would run into Jay at Fort Campbell while I was there, he would always ask me, "Hey, dude, you gonna come join us? We're gonna roll tomorrow on the mats." what he's doing is int- he's inviting me to a fight with a bunch of Special Forces guys. And, making that leap to jump in and go join fifth group rolling on the mat is, you gotta be willing, to test yourself. I love the idea even of plebe boxing today. At one point we were saying, "Oh, we need to get rid of plebe..." I love the idea that you have to have the courage to step in the ring and fight, and you don't know what the enemy's gonna do, 'cause that's ultimately what we're asking you as a young leader, is to lead others into a fight. that question of Do you have a productive nature? people self-select, and that's good information when people self-select. But motivating the unmotivated, that's a different thing. My dad, I used to call him, he was like the Obi-Wan Kenobi. He would somehow or another put the mirror in front of your face, and you would do better than you otherwise would on your own, you know? My old high school football coach, Coach Doug Morrow, would say, "You always work harder for your buddy than you will for yourself." somehow or another, a team can help you build courage in yourself, and that is fulfilling. if you can be on a team, that it becomes contagious. And what's happening is the relative investments in the team become a shared commitment. I'm here again, Aaron, I'm sorry. But it becomes a shared commitment 'cause the rhetorical question I normally ask, Jay, is, is this: Is every decision an allocation decision? I ask it rhetorically because I feel like we're always allocating something. and then I would ask, "What is that thing we're allocating?" And the thing I have fallen on a lot, it's not rhetorical for me, is that we share commitment. I always go to the Night Stalker Creed. The last little line says, "I serve with the memory and pride of those who've gone before me, 'cause they loved to fight, fought to win, and would rather die than quit. Night Stalkers don't quit." But in there, I just said it, they love to fight. If you don't love to fight, then you probably don't need to come join us, Because we're asking you about a trade-off, that is, we expect you to never quit. We expect you to choose trying and possibly dying before you quit, and that's the confidence our ground force has in us, and that's what we expect of you 'cause that's what they expect of you. that results in An ability to fight the ambiguous, Aaron. we don't know what's coming out of this door, but we got a ground force we believe in, and I got some air mobility. I can put you on the ground, man, and help support you. so we're willing to fight whatever comes through that door. That's how I think about it, J-Bone. The commitment of currency, the currency of commitment

Jay: Yeah first of all, I, I really agree, and I think that's, that is a partial answer to what Aaron's saying, is how do you motivate someone? it's creating that collective vision so the collective group is moving, and that can bring someone along who is maybe less motivated. but when you list those three things, know, you talked about plebe boxing or combatives, and then I would throw wrestling in there, too. what strikes me is, what I think people think about the fear of getting hurt. And I don't think it's the fear of getting hurt that keeps people from doing it.

Spencer: it's

Jay: the fear of losing all by themself in front of others. That's the hesitancy that people have to

Spencer: Hmm.

Jay: overcome. and I think that's why three of them are such great developmental opportunities, because you do go out there, are probably gonna lose, and when you do, at some point... And when you do, you just lose all by yourself. And man, that is a great builder of resilience

Spencer: There's good information in Losing By Yourself

Jay: Yeah So I was the operations officer in the Special Operations headquarters, in Iraq. We had roughly forty-two teams of Green Berets and SEALs arrayed around the country. And my boss had recently gotten some mentorship the importance of building what we call, basically relationships. this was in 2009, so the war was becoming less kinetic. The government of Iraq was taking more control. They weren't thrilled about having, know, Americans kick down doors. So we would still do raids, but they had to be pretty well coordinated, and there was getting to be more and more other ways to solve problems. You know, you could, you could talk to a tribe, you could talk to a police leader. And so we realized that the focus needed to be to build these relationships, and my boss called them networks of influence. And we put out an order telling everybody that this needed to be their focus. Not that they couldn't do raids or whatever, but their priority was to build networks of influence so they could develop an understanding of what was really happening and build relationships to help solve problems. And this was the number one priority, put in written order, and we did weekly briefings on it, and we had metrics to track how every team was building their networks of influence. we called it 180 Lunches because we had 180 days left in the deployment. And so the idea was think deliberately on who you're gonna eat lunch with every day. Now one, that's a great lesson for life, right? 'Cause none of us know how many lunches we have left. So think deliberately who you're gonna spend your time with, to build relationships. But we had 180, so we were doing it for tactical purpose. uh, there was one team up in Kirkuk that was doing it especially well. And now if you know anything about Iraqi, the political and geographic landscape, Kirkuk is in northern Iraq, right near the border between the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan and the rest of the government of Iraq. So there's a political divide there there's also an, ethnic divide because north of that border are primarily Kurds, and south of that border are primarily Arabs. then northern Iraq is primarily Sunni Muslim, but there's a ton of oil wealth around Kirkuk, and that has also attracted Shia Muslims. So now you've got some religious faction challenges there between Shia and Sunni Muslims both wanting to control all this vast oil wealth, and then the vast oil wealth also brings in terrorist groups who wants access. So now you've got political, ethnic, religious, and then competition for scarce resources. So it's really a powder keg, and sometimes it would explode into violence, and it could really upset the strategic environments in Iraq. And this team up there was doing a fantastic job at developing their network of influence, really getting a ground level understanding of who was important, why they were doing things, and feeding this report all the way up to senior American military decision-makers to help them on dealing with this issue. And so we went up there, and I went with my boss to go visit this team and get a better understanding of how they were doing it. It's really one of the top teams implementing this idea of networks of influence at one hundred and eighty lunches. And so we went up there and visited them, and they gave us a great brief and helped explain their network. And afterwards, we were walking away to go get something to eat, and I fell back and was talking to the team leader, and I mentioned one hundred and eighty lunches, and he looked at me and he said, "What is that? I heard that somewhere. What's that all about one hundred and eighty lunches?" This guy had no idea what the priority was. He just happened to be doing a great job at it and have a really good team, but he had no idea what... With all that emphasis, the word did not get to him. He was just out there doing what he thought was best, and it just so happened to align. And we talk about the example of everybody rowing together. He just happened to be in cadence, but not because he knew. And, I mean, we thought we were doing everything possible to get that word out. Now, I will say, though, because it's so hard to get the word out to a large organization, right? This was very dispersed, that going to visit, I would argue, was another way to communicate. So he didn't have the word, but by my commander deciding to go up there, he helped, shore that up. But I was dumbfounded that, the word had not got to him. And I just share that as example on as an organization gets bigger and more complex, it is really difficult to get everybody on board with the priorities

Spencer: That's awesome. He was in rhythm,

Jay: and where that ties into Scaling Up

Spencer: just didn't know it

Jay: you know, people strategy, execution, and cash and execution, that's one of the questions is like, what's most important today? Does everybody know that? What's most important this week? Does everybody know that? You should judge your success on whether or not you had a good week based on whether or not you accomplished what's most important. And, if everybody doesn't know that, then, you know, how are you even gonna judge it?

Aaron: Well, I really appreciate, just more and more examples of how difficult it is to communicate, across these huge organizations. and I can't help but laugh about... I don't think my kids know the priorities in our household from from day to day. but that's okay. I'll get better at it. So, the thing that we just always ask people at the end of these is for you to give our listeners or, just people broadly what, a single piece of advice for how they could start doing better as leaders, tomorrow. It doesn't have to be something huge or big. But whatever it is that you think would be most important for them to just start doing tomorrow to live a better life, what would it be?

Jay: Yeah. What a great question. So to me, it would come back to that idea that leadership is simple but difficult. So I think pretty much everybody can come up with some really good, leadership traits and actions. People just know that. You can listen to Simon Sinek, you can read a book and you're like, "Oh yeah, that's great. Why didn't I think of that? Makes total sense." but the challenge is doing it. And so because of that, to answer your question, need to be deliberate in having some feedback loops to find out how they're actually influencing and affecting people. 'Cause oftentimes those things they think they're doing, are not having the impact they think. And you gotta have a way to get candid feedback, whether it's the, know, trusted person who isn't afraid to tell you that you got no pants on today, or you're doing, in a bigger organization, an anonymous survey. but you have to have a way to get feedback on how you're actually affecting people. And the more senior you get, the more important it is because, and like Pat Work said, as the distance between you and the people you're leading grows and they don't have that personal interaction, the likelihood really increases that you're not impacting them the way they think you are or the way that you think you are. So you gotta have feedback loops

Spencer: I love it