Leaders Don’t Own Plans; They Own Clarity | Jayson Coil

Strategy only matters if it survives contact with reality. We sit down with operations chief Jayson Coil to unpack how intent, trust, and disciplined initiative turn a tidy plan into effective action when the stakes are high and time is short. From wildfire lines to boardrooms, we dig into what leaders can do today to bridge the gap between strategy and execution without slipping into control for control’s sake.

Jayson shares frontline stories where readbacks, backbriefs, and honest After Action Reviews exposed interpretation gaps that would have sunk a plan. We talk through building contingencies that go beyond a single preferred course of action, running pre-mortems and red teams that actually change decisions, and the hard but vital habit of judging decision quality separately from outcomes. You will hear why punishing by outcome kills initiative and how to evaluate information sources, conduct bias checks, and make trade-offs instead.

Mission command takes centre stage: not a slogan, but a system. We explore the concrete behaviours that build climate—leaders inviting critique, defining constraints and intent, and creating safe-to-fail simulations where everyone, including the boss, is accountable. We look at aligning policies, incentives, and discipline so they do not undermine empowerment, and why competence in standard practice is the passport to freedom to deviate when context demands it. Along the way, Jayson offers practical tests you can apply: if every deviation needs permission, you have not built mission command; if teams can act on intent and you will back sound judgment, you are getting close.

If you want a clearer strategy, sharper execution, and a team that can adapt under pressure, this conversation delivers tools you can use: red teaming, readbacks, realistic training, and a relentless focus on “What is different today?” rather than “What’s the same.” Subscribe, share with a leader who needs it, and leave a short review with your biggest takeaway so we can keep raising the bar together.

Connect with Jayson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnjaysoncoil/
Jayson's Paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WQ_pQL8_WGlIrAcxSpKOQqxhyLNVGKn3/view?usp=sharing

Enjoying the show?

Subscribe and leave a review on your favourite platform — it helps more people find the podcast.

🔗 Full episodes, show notes, and resources: https://www.lbiconsulting.com/strategymeetsreality-podcast

📺 Watch on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@StrategyMeetsReality

Connect with host Mike Jones → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-h-jones/

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Background

Mike Jones 0:00

Most people think of strategy that way.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Developing a new strategy.

Mike Jones 0:04

Strategic blind spots when strategy meets reality, strategy and innovation.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

In the strategy world.

Mike Jones 0:09

Drive their strategic goals. And welcome back to Strategy Meets Reality Podcast. Welcome back to Strategy Meets Reality Podcast. I'm delighted to welcome Jason Cole to the show. Thank you for joining me uh today, Jason.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hi Mike, and thank you for having me. I'm I'm excited about our conversation.

Mike Jones 0:26

I've followed you for a long time. We we've sort of connected for a long time, and it's great to just finally get you on the show to have a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Yeah. I'm excited about it. I I tell you what, I the diagrams and stuff that you put up on LinkedIn, you you said a lot of things that are that are hard to say in words in some of those diagrams. So I appreciate that. Makes sense of it.

Mike Jones 0:48

I appreciate that. Yeah. I always like it that my my stuff can be useful. Just for our listeners, do you mind giving a bit of background, a bit of context about yourself?

Strategy Meets Reality: Bridging The Gap

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Sure. So I am a firefighter by trade, I guess you could say. Once I got to the military, I went to school to become a paramedic and then a firefighter. And then after I was a firefighter a while, I was like, huh, I got to go back to school to be able to be a captain, and then had to go back to school again. So ended up right now. I am the operations chief for the Sedona Fire District, and I'm also an operations chief on a complex incident management team. Used to be called type one incident management teams in the U.S. And um you know my emphasis is really around my focus has been around the strategy development and enabling that strategy in the field. So a little I have been deployed, I figured out the other day for almost three years on incidents in the 25 years that I've been in the fire, 27 years I've been in the fire service. So quite a bit of time out there trying to see if the things I thought up in my head actually work in practice.

Mike Jones 1:55

That's always a good test, isn't it? Yeah, sure is. We could all sit here and have great ideas, but it's is actually how do they meet reality? How do they translate to the people that are actually operating on the ground? And I find that's where a lot of leaders get that disconnect, so completely disconnected.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

And I've I've been guilty of that before of presenting something so confusingly well that there's no questions, and I took that as meaning that I had done it well. And I'm gonna find out later on when there wasn't alignment that I hadn't done it very well at all. So yeah.

Mike Jones 2:29

Yeah, we always talk about the uh powers in the interpretation. Uh see, we we never know how it's interpreted, interpreted unless we ask.

Readbacks, Candour, And Trust

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Yeah, if if if you could get comfortable doing a readback when you don't when you don't know, or even when you think you know. And with with people, man, you it it's just kind of a superpower, really. And it and it's awkward at first, and you you know, you because you don't want to be that person in the room that doesn't know. But it's it's it's amazing how many times I can reflect back on when you do that, and then you go come out of the room and everybody's like, hey, I'm glad you asked that, because I really wasn't clear either. I'm glad you said that because I thought what you thought, and that wasn't right. And I'm like, so yeah, that that's a good tool. That's a good tool.

Mike Jones 3:10

I mean it's something I often I often say to people, like, what you really need to do, it doesn't really matter if you as a leader understand the plan, because you're probably not the one who's enacting the plan. What's really important that the people that you're that are enacting it understand, and the only way you can cross that barrier is asking them. Or, you know, in the military, everything that we're taught is all about we don't give the information, we ask questions, i.e., what happens when this happens, and they they tell you that's so powerful because you actually then understand if they've interpreted it the way they should have been interpreted.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, that you know, when it comes to planning, and I and I would suspect it's the same in business, the contingencies that in at least in my world are are underrepresented in the planning, exactly like that. Because you you know, you'll ask someone, they'll present this their preferred course of action if you were and no other alternatives, and then you say, So if your plan failed, where would it fail? And what have you done to minimize the impact of that? Right then, you know, it's a great gauge, right? Because if somebody says, My plan it will never fail, that's a watch out. Yeah, and then if there's no planning for it, but it gives you an opportunity to see it sometimes you're surprised, sometimes they're two and three deep in their contingencies and they've really been thoughtful about it, and that's exciting, you know, and you feel a lot more confident about it.

Mike Jones 4:34

And you next you want them to have confidence, you know. When they say, Oh yeah, my plan's great, great. I I want you to have confidence in your plan, but I want to make sure that you've got a reason to be confident in your plan. There's I think there's a very big difference.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Yeah, and and even the question I said, right? You asked that the wrong way, and they're not gonna want to say anything in front of you again if you if you you know if they feel like you're trying to set them up or whatever. But you know, there's there's need to have some rapport there before you ask that question in such a direct way, but getting to it one way or another is important, I think.

Mike Jones 5:06

Yeah, but uh that's that I suppose what people talk about, that candor, isn't it? Is it's but you can't have that. It's the same with mission command. You can't have any of that without trust. Once you've got that trust, you can have that candor, and I I can come out and go, all right, well, you know, we can say those those questions you just said earlier about you know what contingency you've got planned, or you know, where would your your plan fail? When you've got that trust, they'll open up and go, Well, actually, probably if it's gonna fail, it's gonna fail here. Rather than you need to build that, they they're not gonna tell you nothing. They'll be like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

No, we're like, this is last year on a fire eyes. We had a bunch of new division supervisors, so the people that are responsible for a section of the fire. And I was asking them questions. Um, because they presented this plan that was something we didn't do for I'd never done it before. And they said, What what do you how likely do you think this is gonna work? And they said, 70%, 75% that it's gonna be successful. I said, Well, how many times have you done this before? Oh, this is the first time. So I said, So help me understand how you arrived at 75%. You know, if it's the first time you've ever done it. And some of them were like, ah, close hard on us. I said, Well, you know, I'm I'm not. We do it in a private group. You know, we make sure that because we want you to tell to tell the truth, and it's okay that you gave me that number. Sometimes people ask for those numbers, but I'm I'm more interested in what you're thinking, and that's that's the value there.

Mike Jones 6:30

And that that's the thing. I think a lot of people forget about the tools like After Action Reviews, back briefs, red teaming. It's not it's not about like the plan or anything, it's the thinking. It's all about exploring the thinking. Like that's what we want to know, because that's what we can help and support with. Um, but we mustn't we must understand the thinking. Well, you must.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

And I and I'm like most of the stuff I talk about is just because I did it wrong for a long time. And and that's silly, this one. I would I would plan in a vacuum, and I would think that if I put enough effort into it, I could make the best possible plan. And that that that means that the plan would be successful in a complex environment, which is silly, right? Um you know, now I think about a 90% plan to that to that first place that you may need to iterate. So what does that look like? How do you keep everybody safe? How do you have a 90%, and then and then that goes back to that mission command part, right? So when you need to deviate or or iterate, what are the constraints? What are the things that we can do to help you if that happens? What do you need to communicate? All that sort of stuff. And yeah, it's it it's seeing that plan all the way through the end looks good when you start to finish, like you really know what's going on. I don't know, my experience doesn't work as well.

Mike Jones 7:44

No, I've I've done long planning, you know, in the military and also in civilian world, helping companies uh, you know, look at from strategy to execution and doing those planning phases. And when you're in that, you know, that plan, because we've gone through quite a rigorous process to get to that, it looks great. It's not until you you invite people to destroy that plan and you sit there and people are going, Well, have you thought about this? or what happens if this happens? Then you just start seeing your your plan crumble. It's not a bad thing, it's not that your your plan's rubbish, it's just that when you're in that when you're in that planning phase and you're coming up with these answers, those answers become the best answers that you you think you've got, and you get locked in. So it's it's good when someone else is going, you know, have you thought about this? Oh no, I haven't.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

And I um, you know, I'm sure I stole this from someone, but I don't remember who. But telling people that, hey, don't don't become pregnant with the plan. The plan's not your baby, you know, it might be ugly, and that's okay. We'll we'll still, you know, I'm sure we'll find something that it's good at. So let's let's just you know, not become so heavily invested in that plan that it becomes the prize, you know, that that that keeping your plan as the plan that's presented, even if it fails in execution, becomes you that's how you measure success. And I'm like, oh, that's that's a that's a risky measure.

Mike Jones 9:13

Yeah, yeah. And I've had it before where you know in operations where we've we thought we had a great plan. It's not until we we had it tested that we realize there were big gaping holes. But thank God for that, because it was those gaping holes that were were the actual problem when we when we executed it. So hadn't we tested it, hadn't we thought about and reiterated it and come up with solutions, we would we would have been left wanting in those operations. And that's not the place that you want to be testing this. You want to test it beforehand as best you can.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Yeah, and uh you know, something that brings to mind is that that is when values are the there's values that are in tension that between especially in multi-agency kind of responses, and you haven't explicitly uh you know called those out and said them because it's like if you don't want to go to a party, and so you say, Well, oh sorry, I got you know, I gotta go get the wood in or I gotta go do this, and she's oh yeah, I got the wood in for you, and you go through like five different things that instead of saying I just really don't want to go to that party, you know. Yeah, that's what it's like when those values aren't stated because you're trying to solve things, but you're never solving for the right thing because people haven't you know they haven't been explicit about it. And yeah, it's it's hard. Yeah.

Mission Command And Culture

Mike Jones 10:28

It's good, and I and I think it's um really important because you know, in your your current organization and plus your background and my background, that the decision, the feedback loop between a decision and impact with reality is very short and it's extremely sharp if we haven't got it, haven't thought it through. Where I find that a lot of times in organizations, especially larger organizations, they can make a decision and they won't see the impact of that for like three years, which then means when you're saying to them, right, have we thought about this? Have we have we done some red team and war gamed it? Have we thought about the consequences of this? What would happen if this happened? I find they're not interested because they're like, Well, it's not going to impact me.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

So I did a I wrote a paper, I I can give it to you, put it in the chat if you want, or in the in the links, but uh yeah, it was about the the failure of our incident management system in the US, and that all of the different ages at the end of it, I did a pre-mortem. And basically, my headline was that after this fire season, when everything failed miserably, there's everything was combined underneath one fire service. And and then I invited people to provide different pathways for that and did kind of a like a I don't know, a crowdsourced pre-mortem, if you will, from different people in the fire service. And I put it all together. And I was wrong about the outcome because it happened a year earlier than I said it would. It was like two, three years out instead of four years out. But we we just do on February 8th, the United States is going to go to a U.S. wildland fire service for all of the Department of Interior folks. But it's not that I was right, it's that I was most right because I got all these people together to look at a long-term plan, and different people were able to put in those horizons in different ways because you're right. It's so easy to just go to the near term to where the quarterly profits are measured or where the end of this incident is or the things that you can control easily, and you don't have to recruit allies or get people to compel them to to align with you downstream. And that's hard. That part's hard.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Yeah, it is hard.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

And um, yeah, and yeah, I was thinking back to what you said about mission command and and I thought it was funny because I I was royal some notes uh for our conversation. I I put build the team and climate. That was my thing one and I was like, man, that if I was doing this, that'd be like the first if it was a 20-page document, that should be the first 15.

Mike Jones 13:03

And yeah, yeah. How would you you know how how would you look at building that?

SPEAKER_01 13:10

You know, I I think back to the point about trust is like what are those concrete behaviors that I can do that create mutual trust? What are those things that I can do all the time that I don't have to read the room about, but that you know, align with who I am as a person and and that I can do that. And then how can we create safe to fail simulations? Um and ones where you're safe to fail too. Telling people to trust you is one thing, but you know, love exposing your soft underbelly and and you know, showing them the throat like dogs do to each other, that that's a different kind of trust, right? That shows that you really trust somebody. So show some vulnerability in that part. And then um, you know, the last thing I was thinking about was what's the difference between real safety and just saying it's safe? Because I when people throw around words, hey, don't worry, this is a psychologically safe environment. You know, we really want to hear what you have to think. It's like look beyond those layers, right? Because um how policies are written, how day-to-day practices, how you discipline people, how you how you treat failures if it's on a continuum or if it's always like a failure equals a consequence kind of thing. I think all those are the things you some of the things you gotta look at to start to build that group.

Testing Plans: Red Teams And AARs

Mike Jones 14:20

And then what yeah, is that yeah, and I think that's when you know people look at climate or culture, they think about it as just like words, is in like, yeah, we we trust you, we empower you, you want to psychologically they don't they don't equate that to all the other things like you know our policies. What do our actual policies say and incentivize? What when we last disciplined people for doing something, what what was that for? And it's normally you know, like say for instance, you you say you want people to to take initiative, but the last time someone took initiative, they got they got shouted down. No one's gonna take initiative after that.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah, that's a great one. That is that is a great one. And then and I think until you get there, because the next word I the next the next note I wrote was on I said communicate for shared understanding and intent. And until someone's willing to tell you that, hey, I don't understand what you're telling me, you know, which takes that trust, which takes you right, then you're never gonna you're never gonna get there. I think that's it's something that I'm sure I I overlook in a lot of ways. Right. Or I underrepresented.

Mike Jones 15:25

Yeah, it's it's quite easy to you though. It's like we we've been there and it's like it's hard because when you've got everything going on and you've got these people around you, you you you communicate and there's that thing, unless we're consciously thinking about it, we we forget that just because I've communicated it in a way that makes sense to me, it doesn't mean it makes sense to them. And it's not because they're not because they're stupid, it's just because we are unique and individual and we perceive things and see things completely different. And actually just slowing down and saying this is what I want, like, you know, repeat back to me or go tell me what you're what you're thinking right now.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

You know, yeah, you know I I I I I like what you said there, Mike, because um you know one of the things I I do when I present the strategy, because right, my my title says strategic operations. I'm the one that develops a strategy for these incidents. When I present it, it's it's it's easy for people to go, oh you know, some not quite be clear in there, well, Coil does this all the time, so he probably knows what he's talking about. And then and then that you know that ambiguity gets amplified as it goes out in the field and everything else. And so, you know, tell people like, man, I've I've worked on this and I and I feel like it can be better. I just haven't been able to figure out the areas where I where I really need to improve it. Can you point out at least one that needs to be improved? And that's a different framing, right? For somebody than, hey, review my plan, let me know if it's okay. Uh and so it's I've had success with that is is getting better information and then and you know, move trying to iterate that, iterate off that and improve with the plan.

Mike Jones 17:03

And and you're you're inviting it, and that's I think that's something like you know, I I've I've had it, I've done it me personally myself, you know, I've you know been tired, I've been stressed, and I've got a plan, and then someone someone says something, and legitimately they they've spotted something, and I'm just like, I'm not in the mood for this right now. But it's a bad thing because then it comes across that you can't, you know, if you can't challenge, and that's what we want. You know, Rob Mock was talking about that, he wanted that, and what does he call it obedient discipline or initiative? Obedient discipline uh initiative, yeah, where he said, we're gonna use our initiative, we're gonna be obedient, but you know, you you can challenge.

Values In Tension And Time Horizons

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah, just a disciplined initiative, yeah, is um yeah, it was what I think Michigan kind of morphed it into. And you're right, is uh and that's another thing that's uh it's uh it's not uh explicit. The fire service when you start out, at least uh I imagine it's swayed in a lot of ways, and it sets us up for failure downstream, but the you guys, it's you're directing them on what to do. And there's a lot of good reasons why you're directing them on what to do. You direct them on the policies they need to learn, and you direct them on all this kind of stuff. And it's it's how you do that and how much you make sure they understand the why, I think at that phase that matters for later on because if if the why is that if you're gonna deviate, then you need to know the common practice frontwards and backwards, so you know when if you say you're gonna do you know common practice X, that everybody knows exactly what that looks like and they have confidence since you're executing the way you're supposed to. That's part of it. And so then you know when to deviate. And then the other part of it is just that then when you say there's a deviation, they don't question that the common practice wouldn't work. They know that you deviated for a reason. But would you just enforce the common practice and don't give people that other side of it from the beginning, and then you try to switch gears later on as they get more experience? I don't know, you've already kind of conditioned them one way, and I think it gets harder. I think it gets harder to teach people that.

Mike Jones 19:06

Yeah. It's gotta be something that you you've been introduced with. And I think what a lot of people do when they try and build this into the organization is they don't they don't build that, like you said earlier, that sort of the right team and the climate. They don't build that trust, and then they try to put this in as in like it's just a sort of a fad. And then just because it doesn't work straight away, they just abandon it and they go back to the control in ways where this takes this takes a lot. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes trust, it takes a lot of failure, but they'll learn through those failures.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

I um could agree with you more. I was tasked with redoing our performance management system because we we had that one that was just like everybody else, like a lot of people's, probably, not everybody's, but where it's a once a year sit down. If you're the subordinate, you fill out your little sheet ahead of time about the things that you think you do well. You go down and sit with your boss, your boss tells you how you grade it out and gives you gives you things to help you improve. And there's like there's so much baked into that process, the infrequency of it to actually end up change the you know, the facade that it creates. And so as I was going to change that, man, it was I wanted to align more with mission command. And then I was like, I realized all the different things that people had to know. I realized all the things that we had to teach them, I realized all the ways that our policies needed to align with that language and behaviors. And make sure that our disciplinary process aligned with that as well. That, you know, that some errors are plaudable and some errors are, you know, there's a there's a very real and very immediate consequence for them. But explaining that continuum, and it's hard. It took a lot more time than I thought. I wasn't just fixing a performance management system if we want to go that way. But it's so powerful. I mean, you know, I just yeah, being able to go out there and do it without and know that they're doing it well in a coordinated way, when the environment's gonna change from what they saw when they got there, is is worth the effort.

Mike Jones 21:02

Yeah. And I think that's the that's the thing. People go in thinking there's just a lever that they're gonna go for, like performance management, and that's gonna solve their problems. They realize, no, no, there's a whole there's a whole structure around here that's it's you know, we we can say we want you to have disciplined initiative and do this stuff. But if everything else is saying something different, they're not gonna do it, they'll go with what what's in what's enforced by the structure.

Building Climate: Real Psychological Safety

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Right. So when we were during COVID, the very beginning of COVID, um, we as we were learning more things, the our the posture and our PPE requirements, our mask requirements specifically change. And I remember I had a meeting with all the captains, and I and I said, Hey, so this is the standard, and I spelled out what first contact was supposed to look like as far as what they're supposed to wear. I said, unless um unless that level of protection will prevent you from accomplishing the mission, then you You have the ability to deviate. I said, then I would expect you to. And they're like, well, then what do you want us to do? And then, you know, so what are we supposed to deviate to? I said, well, it depends. If you're on the end of a rope doing a high angle rescue and you can't wear a mask as a comp, then you probably take that off. If you're that's up to you guys on how you deviate. But you can't, you know, you you should. And then I realized that we hadn't, I think as firefighters were good within our domain, but then this was something that was outside of our domain, and it was it went from being uncertain to being ambiguous, and it took more work to get everybody aligned. We eventually got there, but it was my fault because I was framing it as just an uncertain environment. But there was so much ambig ambiguity around it that it was different. And um I didn't recognize the difference.

Mike Jones 22:43

It's like I remember a while ago the British Army went through this thing. I think I I had left by this point, thankfully. But they had this whole um sleeves down, sleeves up thing. And what it was is they were going on about because it was in the British Army, as soon as it comes to a certain date in near summer, that's when sleeves get rolled up and we have short sleeve order. In the winter, it comes back to long sleeve order. But then, because of our weather, it's a bit strange. Sometimes you may have a bit of hot weather, you may have a bit of cold weather. People are like, Oh, it's stupid that I have to really bone thing, like it's stupid that I have to have the sleeves rolled up. I'm cold, I can have them down. And then so they brought this new thing out going, you know, um, if if you're cold, you can have your sleeves down. I'm like, what are we doing? I said, the problem isn't that people can't have their sleeves up and down, the problem is that we we don't have any mission commands on camp. The fact that you know a local commander can't make the decision to deviate from a dress policy because actually, lads, it's it's cold. Pull your sleeves down if you want. That's the problem. But they were they were looking at something completely strange like sleeves. The problem is, the underlying route is there's no mission command. Local commanders do not think they can have the the disciplined initiative to deviate from uh a policy.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Yeah, if the if the leader knew what I knew, would he do what I did?

Mike Jones 24:14

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Yeah. Yeah. If the leader knew these guys were cold, what would he do? Expect them to stay cold and put their sleeves down. That that should be enough, right? Without having to go any further into it. But it's it's it's fascinating. That's good. I like that because it it it it is it is representative, and it's I I think finding those things that almost seem silly, but that are you know basically a valuation of your of your of your mission command culture are are important because it prevents you from waiting to find that out when it when it really matters. If you take those little things serious and then and then reinforce the the right behavior there. Or call yourself out if you're the one in charge for for not enabling that. And then that'd be a that'd be a powerful lesson.

Mike Jones 25:03

Yeah, yeah. I think so. I think they just they missed that opportunity because they just put it as a uh social media or communications campaign about sleeves up and sleeves down, without really thinking, actually, let's look at you know, first principles here, and actually we've got something fundamentally wrong here with with what with what we're meant to be established around, which is you know, mission command, it's meant to be sacrosanct to us. But you see this all the time, and you no doubt you must see this with because you are in a safety critical environment and you have standards, you know, policies that are like you know, are written from high.

Policy, Discipline, And Empowerment

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Oh yeah, and I um I think the the the most least indelible example of that was when I was I was a brand new division supervisor. So I was a the guy that was in charge of that section of fire. It was in 2002 on this fire called the nettle fire. Night before we put line in, fire got across that line. I thought the line was gonna hold, and now we stood to lose this whole flank of this fire and threaten these big telescopes, all this stuff. So we were trying to hold this line, and fire got established down below us, and a bunch of us got cut off at this hell of spot, it's there they cleared for hell base or to fly people off this really steep ridge full of fuel. And as conditions worsened, the fire got all the way around us. And basically we were in the chimney, which is not a particularly good place to be when the fire is below you, and and and so there's a bunch of hot embers landing everywhere, hard to breathe, smoke was everywhere. And and I was reticent to tell people to open up their shelters, these aluminum kind of tents that we have to protect ourselves from the radiant heat and the smoke, because I knew that it was going to prompt an investigation. Because the moment you bust those open, it it prompts you know an investigation is the next thing to follow. But looking back on that, that's certainly one of the strongest points of where I was focused on consequence and the instead of just focusing on what was the right thing to do in that moment. And the right thing there would have been to and we did eventually.

Mike Jones 27:01

I'm a slow learner, but luckily I eventually learn and um yeah, but I I see that, and I think that yeah, I've seen it a lot in certain you know, organizations I work with that are safety critical. Is that the the training people, and I think it's dangerous, they're training people, or not training them directly as you know, official training, but through through behavior and policies and processes, they're they're training people not to consider context, to only consider policy. And you you can't operate that way because you know context is key. You must understand the context, you must understand the aim, like you said earlier, clear and ambiguous intent, like and context. That that that's the that's the thing that gives them the awareness to when when do I need to flex when you deviate? Because I know that I need to achieve this aim. I know I need to do this safely, so how can I how can I achieve the aim as safe as possible? Rather than thinking if I do this, then you know I'm gonna get consequence of investigation or something.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Well, I mean, had had the question uh I'd ask myself been what's in the best interest of the of the the firefighters that are here with me right now? It would have been to get them in the shelters and get them out of the smoke. That that would have been the right question to ask.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

You know.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

You do you get conditioned through, you know, it's it's not you know, there's reasons for it, right? You and I could think of the exact serious acts investigation that just hammered these guys for doing what they needed to do in a particular situation that was forefront in my mind when I was worried about what it was gonna look like for me, the reputational damage, all that kind of stuff. But that was the wrong lens. It's um, you know, right wrong would have been the safety lens.

Mike Jones 28:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean this is why um, you know, really good after action reviews are really important, and not not just for um not just for when things go wrong, just like generally, because you you you start to learn and you I think what I love about that is those assumptions. Like if you were there, you know, yeah, and we're we're going like what what what's what prevented you from getting your shells out sooner and you go off because I thought, you know, consequent that that's that kind of insight is golden, that you're thinking, wow, what what's causing us to to to create an environment or climate that that's the response that I'm getting from my people?

Safe-To-Fail And Decision Deviations

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Yeah, no, you're right. And and we actually did a they they did a staff ride um for it was one of the ones because usually we do them a lot like the military over incidents that had fatalities associated with them or something like that. But this was one that didn't, and and we did a staff ride about it. But when we met to do the staff ride and we're going through that, I thought I had a very congruent narrative of of what happened and what was going on at this other place we called the Aspen Stand where people got cut off and were stuck at. And man, my story was 60% accurate at best. Once you start hearing from the people that were there as we're sitting around talking about every different perspective. And I and I think that's just a good thing to remember. And not just in bad days, right? But just that you're looking at this through the amount of sleep you got the night before, the other stressors you got going on, the way the last fire behaved, and so is everybody else, you know, especially communities you go into. I actually will tell people, remember, we're fighting this fire and we're fighting the fire that happened before it. Because whatever didn't go right on that one is changing the frame of how people are looking at it when they're the people that live there. They didn't go through 10 more fires like we did since then. They that was their last one. And it certain things are gonna matter more to them because of what didn't go well before.

Mike Jones 30:51

Yeah, that's so good. It's so true as well. I think we I think we sort of neglect actually the the importance of the last fire or the last fight or the last incident we've been in because that's the thing closest to the mind that's going to shape um their decisions. Yeah, that's that's really good. I like that.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Yeah. Yeah, whether it's rapid response, it's how you your mobility, counter mobility, setups, whatever. Whatever you didn't do well, you're probably gonna overemphasize or have a tendency to. And then how do you how do you do it better, but but still just give it just the attention it deserves when you got all those other things competing for your attention? I don't I don't know. That that's that's the secret, I guess, right?

Mike Jones 31:29

Yeah, yeah. And I always like because your your environment, I look at and think, I'll take my hats off, you know, just trying to you're in a really safety critical dealing with those wildfires. And often when I'm speaking to organizations that are in those safety critical, highly regulated, and we talk about stuff like mission command, learning and all that stuff, it's almost as if like you can't do that here, you know. But the the policy says this, and that's it. We must do. Do you how do you wrestle that? How do you get the learning, the mission command into an organization like that?

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Well, I I would say the first thing is that we are not immune to those. Maybe next time we talk, I'll give you more about it, but I'm part of uh of a process right now, and that there's a lot of um supposed to be an interagency process and it's gonna be a big deal. But there are people that want to protect their agency position. And so that that's that's the thing that happens, right? Is that whether it's your agency, whether it's your the the section you represent, whether it's your incident management team, you know, if there's something there that's taking a higher priority over the goal, over the stated intent of the mission, then um you know that's that's something that that we certainly have to watch out for. But we talk about that you know that that we have the ability, we have a discretionary function, so we have discretion, but lots of times that doesn't get tested until afterwards, and and it's tested in sometimes a very legalistic way, whether, you know, um, but culturally it's it's acceptable to make those deviations, but it's also because 99% of the time it goes right. I think if you if you took your choice, if you took your evaluator set and looked back to like, so the short version is we we need to have more fires on the landscape if we're going to prevent large catastrophic fires. And that means that there's going to be decisions made to let fires burn that sometimes will not go as planned. And so, how do you look at the decision quality, all the different steps to make a high quality decision, source of information, reducing bias, all that kind of stuff, separate from the outcome in a way that allows people to improve and not excuse their behavior because of something beyond their control, but at the same time makes it where when a bad consequence occurs, you can improve from it and not just stop doing that. Because it's easy to just say put them all out. I mean, we did that in the United States for 100 years, and it didn't work very well for us.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Separating Outcomes From Decision Quality

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Create a bunch of unhealthy environments, but that was probably not a very good answer. But in my mind, that's it. Is you you you have to, I mean, I think to sum it up, you need to sub you need to separate the decision divorce decision outcome from decision quality when you're evaluating how you can improve.

Mike Jones 34:10

Yeah. And I think that's that's quite I always say to people about, you know, we call them after action reviews, not after outcome reviews.

unknown 34:19

Yeah.

Mike Jones 34:19

Because we can't we can't change the outcome. So why why the outcome is the outcome? We can improve the decision making, we can change that over time, but we can't the outcomes happened. And I think what you I think that's perfect, that how to separate the two. And I think that's what people really struggle with. They can't separate so they never learn. Because I I I think about a certain organization I work with that's um that's safety critical, and something you said earlier around um was it, you said uh oh yeah, the sorry, that the thing that you know most of the time it works.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Mike Jones 34:56

And and I I think about the amount of times that these engineers they do stuff and they do deviate and it works and it's fine, but they don't say anything. So we're not they don't get that feedback about, oh yeah, they deviated and this happened, and they're learning from it. They don't say because there's that one time where something did go wrong and all hell breaks loose, and the only response is to put another policy stop them from doing that or put another policy, another process in place, which then they think can't go through that again.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

Yeah, and and and I I think about as I was going through that policy part of what I told you before. There are so many of that I could have put names on. Oh, that's so-and-so because he found this loophole and not calling in sick on time or whatever. Everything gets tightened up. And I'm like, I don't know. It it it's it takes a while to unwind those, and I and I get it. And especially when it comes to like when you're going interior on a fire, there is a process that is the standard way that that so every all the other um groups of firefighters that show up, they have a an expectation, unless they hear different, that this is what you're doing, this is where you're going.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

So you know, all that is important, and then when you deviate, you gotta say why, so it doesn't become those deviations that are hidden. And then but the you know, the other the flip side of that is at least what I see is that we deviate when the tempo gives us slack that we can afford to to make processes less effective and and to make communication less concise and less complete. And then when you get back into an up tempo, because sometimes I'll be on a firefighter and there'll be a fire and there'll be two or three hundred people that work for me. Sometimes the the most I think is 5,000. So it you know it changes quite a bit there in the and how quickly a fire is advancing and how how how how aged your intelligence is by the time you start taking action on it, and all that kind of stuff. And so all those processes, those those workarounds that you that you did because you didn't have a clear process, they work fine up to a threshold, but then it is like it's a you know, it's it's not just a gradual fail. The wheels come off.

unknown 37:12

Yeah.

Work As Imagined Vs Work As Done

SPEAKER_01 37:13

You know what I mean? And and we're we're on a fire in Washington, and and one of those examples, we flew through different crews up on these high, high ridges in Blackhawks, and and they were all supposed to work on different sections of the line and come together. Well, that night it finally snowed in this, it was on the Rockies on the around the Continental Divide. It snowed a lot. And so there's these three groups of firefighters stuck up there in the cold, and then they um and then they used swing loads to bring them food, hot meals in that night. Well, they screwed up the sling loads. One crew got all the steaks, one got all the all the mashed potatoes, and the other one got all the lettuce. It was right before dark, there was no flying up there to change it. Like if you're the steak guy, and even if you're the mashed potato guy, you're probably not that big of a deal to you. Same mistake, same, same error. But if you're the lettuce guy and you're gonna be up there all night freezing, you're gonna look at it different. You're gonna you're gonna care more.

Mike Jones 38:02

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you you're not gonna be happy with that being the lettuce guy. I remember um in in Iraq in 2003 when we went over the border, they had messed up the uh logistics and we had the same meal for like months. So we had the same beef and stew for months. Like it got that bag we were trying to rob from the US Marines to to steal some of their food.

unknown 38:28

Yeah.

Mike Jones 38:30

Couldn't handle stew anymore.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

That's bad when you rather have a dehydrated pork patty or a hot dog like they were back in the day, and then you're right about that, you know, about the different mistakes.

Mike Jones 38:44

Um again, it's it's like what people can look at this and say, Yeah, what we're not advocating for is people shooting from the hip. And I think that's what gets confused around this learning and mission command is that it's like you could do do what you want, but it's not. It's it's there is a key thing around, you know, constraints. There must be constraints, there must be a clear intent about what the aim is, stated aim, and they must have the capability to have that freedom. So they must have training, you know, high level of understanding of doctrine, the training, and that gives them the freedom of action to do what they need to do.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

I I frankly think I espouse this in that in that training stuff that I was developing, but you have to have a higher degree of competence in the standard approach, if you will, whether it's what we call minimum company standards for how you would you know tag a tie up the hose of the hydrant and bring it into a house or have you, you have to know all those things to a greater degree than you would if you weren't exercising mission command. Because when you deviate and you communicate that over the radio, everybody needs to know why. They need to understand that there's a reason and they need to understand because at the end of the day, I mean you said it before, appreciate the context, define the problem, develop an approach. So if you're not doing it the standard way, then that means that that context that we expect in 90% of those single family home fires is different for some reason here. And that should be the thing that that gets everybody paying attention because it's I I like it. You could you could list on every fire like every large fire balance, like a bunch of things that are the same. And that's not very useful. But if you say, what's different about this fire? What's hey, that smoke looks more purple than black that's coming out of the top of that house. Why is that?

SPEAKER_02 40:31

And then you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 40:33

There's just things and and so weak signals, right? Just looking for those things that just don't make sense, don't pattern match with what you expect. But that means you gotta have a good sense of what it it looks like normally, what normal behavior is in that situation, or you won't notice them.

Weak Signals: What’s Different Today

Mike Jones 40:48

No, and I I think that's great. Like I never thought about that way around what's different. I think we always look at you know what's similar in a sense, oh, it's just a fire, or it's just an instant we go to, it's always this way, rather than what's different uh on this situation that would then force maybe us to adapt due to the context. And this is why you know we we must have that learning, and I say this, I uh get gets really frustrated nowadays because like I hate using the words like oh learning culture or learning this or getting things because yeah, because people say, Oh, we've got a learning culture, and like, no, you haven't. When when's the last time you sat people down and done like an after action review or you warn-game war-gamed anything or done a red teaming or or or done anything or post-mortem, pre-mortem, or anything that actually was about learning or you know, developing different scenarios or anything like that, and probably be zero.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

Well, and so again, telling on myself, but the you know, there's that that PowerPoint capabilities versus the real world capabilities, you know. And and when it came to uh building that that the culture and and everything to be able to enable mission command, and I was thinking about the communications part of it and the small group communication, basically crew resource management and that communications. And so there's this program that's called Inner Labs that I've been work on to be able to be a deliver of, but it was it was made for Luftansa. But if if you looked at it on the surface, it's you think why do firefighters even care about this? And uh, and a bunch of German firefighters go away to like camps to practice this stuff where they just focus on it. But four computer screens, you crash in a spaceship on a spaceship has issues that you have to correct. And the computer screens are just there to um create inputs, but you have to communicate verbally or over radios to each other, and and there's a lot of coordination that's involved to be able to solve the problems. And oh my gosh, it is so funny how quickly somebody that's like, oh no, I'm I'm good, I'm a great communicator, and then you you do that and you realize that they weren't closing loops or they weren't listening to other inputs or they were saturating the radio with too much traffic. And and the cool thing is, is they see it too, because it's happening right now. Yeah, and so you have those AARs right afterwards, and you talk about that and review it, and then they're able to improve off of that. But you're right, it's just giving them a training on what it being part of Mission Command or what being part of an effective team means and say we're a learning culture because we provided a training, and they sat there and clicked all the boxes on their computer and and got credit.

Mike Jones 43:24

Yeah. But the uh no, yeah, on that online learning crap. Um you're right. But I really don't think that a lot of civilian organizations, I'll put this, really appreciate actually training. Because what what a lot of them yeah, none of them do it. They they have that online learning, or they'll go away, they'll have time away where they'll go off and do like a Go Ape or do something really stupid, but they aren't actually doing these training, putting people in these situations that want to test their resilience, test the skills that are relevant to their jobs. They're just

SPEAKER_01 44:01

And so, I mean, if you can't if you can't suffer a consequence in a simulated environment in front of your peers and be accountable for that, and then yet you're getting you expected this person to train them to operate well as a team with real world consequences, it just doesn't work that way. At least not in my world. It's like you because it goes back to the very beginning this thing about trust and and you know psychological safety. And if you haven't practiced that, you're just not you're not gonna hear the term and then just be good at it. You're you know, and people aren't gonna see that you're hey, I you know, I'm trustworthy. It's like saying that you're loving, right? My wife can tell me, could tell you if I'm loving or not, but for me to go, I'm loving, you know, may as well just say I'm purple.

Training That Changes Behaviour

Mike Jones 44:42

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of organizational leaders live in this uh I call it like psychosis. There's like a there's a difference, is there's like this, there's this perceived world that they tell everyone, and there's the actual world where things actually happen. And they've got to be there, like as a leader, as an organization, if if there's a massive gap between that that world you talk about and tell people about and what you actually do, then then you're in a world of hurt.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Yeah, well, right, work is done versus work is imagined.

Mike Jones 45:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

And I've been a part of a lot of learning reviews, and and they'll you reference the policy. And there's a place for it, right? There's a compliance-driven part of our job for sprinkler assessments, for doing making sure that your mask fits right and that the air that you're breathing has been tested properly. I get it. There's that part, and it's it's pretty X's and O's. You either did it when you're supposed to or you didn't do it when you're supposed to. But then there's a lot of it that the work has been adapted because the way it was described to do it was ineffective or you know, just was a bad idea. And then all of a sudden, when something goes wrong, then they look at it and go, Oh, the reason we went wrong is because they weren't doing it like it says in the manual. Well, see, we haven't been doing it the way it says in the manual for the last you know 10 years. That's not the problem. And then it then you feel good, right? You hey, we did our assessment, we found this was the cause, he didn't follow the manual, and then you move on and you haven't fixed a thing. But you pay one person where the damn thing won't tell you next time. Um, you know, when something goes wrong, they'll hide it.

SPEAKER_02 46:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

And you'll lose that currency, that currency of honest communication. Yeah.

Mike Jones 46:24

I mean, that's that's that's the thing, and it's like it's almost as if we wait. It's like everyone knows about it, every everyone knows it, everyone talks about it indirectly, but no one acknowledges it until something really goes wrong. And it's only when something really goes wrong they acknowledge it, and you're thinking, Well, you you you you could have done something before this, you just waited because you it's it's easier to ignore it and hope that you know things don't align in the future for it to go wrong.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

And a version of that, I agree with you, and a version of that is when there's a subordinate that's not doing something the way they should, and you say, Well, you know, and I've heard this a couple different ways when we're doing these learn interviews. One of them is, hey, well, I was relatively new to the team, and I didn't know if that was their culture, so I was just kind of trying to feel it out. You just told me you knew what they're doing was wrong. And if you're the leader, what their culture was before doesn't necessarily mean it's right. I get you have to, you know, you need to maintain credibility, you don't want to put yourself on the outside. You uh there's but that can't be your reason for not acting, especially when you see something that that is deviating. And it's it's amazing how many like different variations of that. That is just because what I hear is that that you're in a position of authority, you knew what happened, and you chose not to take action.

Mike Jones 47:36

Yeah, yeah. And that's why we have we have doctrine in those things to help us with that. But you know, even even in that situation, you at least go, that's interesting. Tell me how come you you do it that way.

SPEAKER_01 47:50

Oh yeah, yeah, you don't have to beat them up over it, you don't have to lose report over it. But if you ignore it, I mean, you should think of how about from different people's perspective perspective, right? So if you're that person, that subordinate, and then you just explain what you're doing and why, and the new boss who you know you understand has some pretty good quals and came in here well recommended, doesn't say anything to you, it's easy for you to think that you're that he likes what you're doing, or he or she. Yeah, you're doing you're doing the right thing. Yeah, right. And he may go tell his buddies, hey, you know, the book says this, but I told my boss about this way, and he liked it.

Mike Jones 48:25

Yeah, and you know, so it's it's it's almost like I I'm only saying this because I had my mum around at the house today and she had her dog, and we got two, she's got two of her dogs, and we got dogs, but one of her dogs is a absolute horror bag because it was it's like a um it's like a cast off from a litter, so she took it.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

Yeah, we can't rescue, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

Owning Errors And Learning Fast

Mike Jones 48:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And um, but she has no discipline with it, but she wants to, but she reinforces their behaviour all the time because what it would do is it would go grab something they shouldn't have and she'll give it a treat to try and take the thing off the dog, but she's given it a treat and she can't realise that the reason why he's not improving is because you're reinforcing the the bad behaviour, and and I think that's the same in that situation, it's that sometimes we don't call it out, and just by the virtue of not calling it out, we're reinforcing that behaviour, so they don't know they don't know that it's wrong because sometimes when things it's almost like when you talk to people and go like, why do you do it that way? Don't know, we've always just done it that way. Is it's the things that have just gone on until someone actually challenges and said, No, and actually no, this is what we do, and let's do it properly, things will just carry on because they don't know, and no one's no one's given that feedback.

SPEAKER_01 49:43

So I that's great. I love that. And I'll tell you that this I don't know if this will land with the audience, but it's um something that is near and dear to my heart. So I I am passionate about archery elk hunting. If I could pick one thing to do with my free time, I would I would do it all the time. It is very hard. Uh I like to eat elk, um, and I like to make sure that they have a good habitat and everything else up until that time. So I kind of it's funny, I do I I work on both ends of it with helping restore habitat and at the same time I love to go elk hunting. But the best part, one of the things I I I enjoy, I don't know if I enjoy the most about it, but that I reflect on often is that there's no excuses. So you have to get pretty close and the elk, you know, they they obviously don't want you around. And so whenever things go wrong, it's your fault. The wind wasn't right and you you know you and the elk but you never blame the elk. You never say, Oh, you smelled me and you ran away. You shouldn't have done that.

SPEAKER_02 50:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:43

But in like in the real world, I think about how times somebody's like, Well, we talk about what we intended to do. That'd be me. Like I intended to sneak up on the elk. And we'll and then we talk about what they did. I all I was trying to do was sneak up on him, and you know, and he and he was too small for me to shoot anyways, and so he should have known he was safe, but he ran off. We we talk about that all the time, about like what we intend and then what the other person did to try to justify. Like, you tend to train the dog. Well, you're not really training the dog because the dog's getting a reward every time it jumps up here and it doesn't know that it's getting a reward for what you want it to do. It's thinking it's getting rewarded for what it has already done.

Mike Jones 51:21

Yeah, um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

I don't know if that makes sense, folks, but that's that sticks in my head all the time.

Mike Jones 51:26

Yeah, it definitely does. And I think that's too easy, isn't it, for us to go, that's what I intended to do, but it's not my it wasn't my fault.

unknown 51:34

Yeah.

Mike Jones 51:34

You know, it's something else's fault, or it's this policy's fault, rather than, you know, actually the the first part of learning is thinking, yeah, there was stuff that's probably out of your control. Um, and we can reconcile that, but you you've got to own up for what you did wrong. You know, you shouldn't have took that you didn't took that path where you know it's gonna be there's there's a bracken and you made noise. It's it could be multiple things, but you've got to you've got to own that. And I hope one day I can come out back to America and do some elk hunting. Yeah, actually. Yeah, yeah. That sounds amazing to me.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

It's a lot of fun, but yeah. You know, you think about uh one of the that I've I'll tell myself, because you you know you always do your own little AAR on yourself. One of them is taking a knee, so it's easier to make yourself a little bit smaller profile if you take a knee. But like, why in the military you only take one knee when you stop on a patrol? Because it's uncomfortable. You're not gonna fall asleep with one knee on the hard ground. Yeah, same thing there. You take a knee and then the L sometimes they move faster than you think they were, sometimes they move a heck of a lot slower. And then you're on a knee for 30 minutes on rocks and you're wanting to move a little bit, but now they're really close. And you tell yourself, never take a knee. But the next time the intuition is to get down, get low, make yourself a little bit smaller, visibility. So yeah, yeah, and I do it again and I kick myself.

Final Tests For True Mission Command

Mike Jones 52:48

We all know that as well. And definitely if you've been there for a while, that first to that first part where you have to stand when you've been on the knee for a while, definitely when you've been in the army for a long time, that hurts. You're like, oh, yeah, yeah. Not taking the knee again. I'm gonna stand.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Stand next time, and then you forget the next second.

Mike Jones 53:06

Yeah. Yeah. I've absolutely loved this conversation. Before we end it though, what would you like for the our listeners to go away and think about from this this episode?

SPEAKER_01 53:18

Oh man, that's that's a great question. So I think just maybe one test. If if you're thinking about mission command, or if you think that you already are practice at mission command, is so I what I said was thinking to myself is I said, How am I doing a good job? I say if intent is clearly enough communicated that they can exercise discipline initiative without communication. And so if if if you look at your your system or your mission command system you want to build it off, or that you maybe already have, and you say, if I communicate intent on on the mission clear enough that if you know intent's one apart, right? But then the situation causes them to have to deviate that they can deviate with the greater comms and and that that deviation will you know you that you'll back them on that deviation and that they'll have a good rationale for it. I think if if you get to that point, man, you're doing really good. So I think that's a good kind of a lot of things.

Mike Jones 54:11

I think that's really good. Definitely they can think about actually how for every deviation, if they're calling you up for every deviation, you haven't got that, so something's missing.

SPEAKER_01 54:21

Yeah, yeah. If you have to make every decision, then you are doing it wrong. Yes. And you're just like whoever you are, you're the strategy guy, right? Higher up the food, you're supposed to have more your your horizon should be further. You should be less looking down at the task, looking forward at where you're going. And it and every time you're having to deal with something that that a subordinate leader or or a person should have been dealing with, you're taking time out of your ability to to look forward and look out.

SPEAKER_02 54:50

Yeah.

Mike Jones 54:50

You just are something something's gonna get and that yeah, and I think that's the powerful thing, isn't it? It's like there there is there are so many benefits to that. Um, the reason why I want this, but also you know, you if you're constantly dealing with this stuff, you're you're not doing your job. And if you're not doing your job, eventually that that feedback loop's gonna come back around and it's gonna start destabilizing the organization because you're not looking out on the head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

It will it will do you no good at that time to blame that you have supporters who don't know what they're doing because that's your fault now.

Closing Thanks And Resources

Mike Jones 55:26

Yeah, and it's too late. Yeah, that's awesome. And please send me the um the paper, so I'll I'll link it to the show notes for people to have a look at. I think it'd be fascinating for people to read. And for the listeners, if you've enjoyed this episode as much as I have, please like and um subscribe and share to your network so they can get the value from this um great conversation. And Jason, thank you so much for joining me. Um it's great to finally have you on the show.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

Yeah, I appreciate it, Mike. I've I've really enjoyed my time. You take care.

Mike Jones 55:57

Cool. And you, buddy, take care.

unknown 56:00

Yep.