The Human Behavior Podcast
Do you ever wonder why people act the way that they do? Join human behavior experts Brian Marren and Greg Williams as they discuss all things human behavior related. Their goal is to increase your Advanced Critical Thinking ability through a better understanding of HBPR&A (Human Behavior Pattern Recognition & Analysis.) What is HBPR&A? It's a scientific (and fun) way to understand and articulate human behavior cues so that you can predict likely outcomes and it works regardless of your race, religion, political ideology or culture!
The Human Behavior Podcast
What Problem Does This Solve?
We explore why organizations rush toward new tech, convinced that shiny equipment will solve their deepest problems when often the issues are fundamentally about training, judgment, and decision-making.
• The Boeing 737 MAX case study demonstrates how technological "fixes" without proper training led to catastrophic failures
• Most resource decisions are reactive, not strategic, with organizations buying gear instead of investing in people
• Tools are the default solution because they offer tangible ROI, political safety, and avoid accountability for leadership
• Technology enhances execution after a decision has been made but doesn't affect whether the decision itself was appropriate
• Training operates "left of bang" by teaching when to act and how to assess situations, regardless of available tools
• The critical question: "If you removed all your high-speed gear, would your people still make good decisions?"
• The real ROI comes from developing good judgment under pressure, not from acquiring more equipment
• Rather than measuring success by resources spent, focus on measurable outcomes and performance improvements
Don't forget to check out our Patreon channel for additional content and subscriber-only episodes. If you enjoyed the podcast, please consider leaving us a review and, more importantly, sharing it with a friend. Training changes behavior.
Leaders are readers of the Great Books of Western literature.
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Hello everyone and welcome to the Human Behavior Podcast. In our experience, we often see organizations and individuals rush toward new technology and equipment, convinced that these shiny solutions will solve their deepest problems. But here's a critical question many fail to ask what problem does this solve? In today's episode of the Human Behavior Podcast, greg and I explore the reasons behind the allure of new gear, highlighting the significant difference between perceived solutions and genuine needs. We discuss real-world examples and practical strategies to help listeners identify when new equipment truly adds value and when it merely serves as a costly distraction or a pacifier for other problems. Join us as we dive deeper into understanding the human behavior driving these decisions and uncover how enhancing decision-making skills and investing in training can often provide more substantial long-term benefits than simply upgrading gear. Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed the episode. Don't forget to check out our Patreon channel for additional content and subscriber-only episodes. If you enjoyed the podcast, please consider leaving us a review and, more importantly, sharing it with a friend. Thank you for your time and remember training changes behavior. All right, greg.
Speaker 1:So for today's conversation we've got a good one, and it's around the central theme of what problem does this solve?
Speaker 1:And that question alone is a very simple thought experiment, thought exercise that you can use in a lot of situations and we're going to get into that.
Speaker 1:But I'll give sort of some background on this and just in general, we've talked about this kind of before in general, like what we provide is a thing with a K, not a thing with a G, but we'll get into kind of like why this kind of keeps happening over and over again in a number of different areas. And so the idea is a lot of organizations will often invest in tools to fix problems or that are, you know where the problem is actually fundamentally about training, judgment, decision-making. We assign a technology to that and that's kind of like throughout human history we've always come up with technological solutions to problems. That's not generally the issue, but the issue is it's kind of becomes the wrong solution. And so we're going to talk about today about why you know we have that tendency and why, you know, not only is it ineffective but it can be very often dangerous. And so you know me, I watch a lot of uh, when I do watch TV, I usually watch some, some sort of documentary.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, unless my, my wife, you're not watching Golden Girls.
Speaker 1:And then then we're watching Real Housewives of whatever, which I can't stand, but I also find it extremely informative and very, very insightful into pop culture and society as a whole. But that's a different episode. So today I watched one on the Boeing 737 MAX. And so there was all these problems with it, right, and so there was all these problems with it, right? So Boeing, their 737 MAX was developed to compete with rival competitor Airbus' more fuel efficient, larger plane. So rather than designing a new airframe from scratch, having to go through that whole process massive investment, all kinds of stuff you have to do, what they did was they took their existing 737 platform and added larger engines.
Speaker 1:Now, the key reason why they did this was because the you know pilots who are currently rated and certified to fly the 737 would not have to go through any recertification process. It wouldn't be something long, meaning it could be adopted very quickly. Everyone like this, like, hey, this gives us this new capability. Everyone still has the you know the requirements to continue to fly the plane, so we don't have to change anything. Wow, this is a great solution. And look at what it's going to do for our bottom line. You know, it's basically the same plane. So that was kind of the concept behind it.
Speaker 1:But the problem with this new design of adding these larger engines is that the placement of the engines cause the aircraft's nose to pitch upward under certain flight conditions. Now, I'm not a pilot, but that's not always a good thing if your nose starts to pitch upward. And so, because this design issue what they had, they said, okay, well, we're going to counteract that and we're going to create a technological fix. And so they said, rather than again spending the time and the money and the resources and pulling pilots offline and getting them trained up and hey, this is what happens, but you can counteract that what they did was they just implemented this new system called MCAS Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. So the idea was the MCAS automatically pushed the nose of the plane down if it detected that the aircraft was climbing too steeply. Now, once again, greg, I am not a pilot, but I think, for a significant amount of the time that you're flying, you don't want the nose of the plane to be pushed downward during your flight.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to sit here and believe that Boeing made a mistake, okay, so if you're trying to get me to 100, I'm just saying that's a little hard to follow. So yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't want to get. I like my life, I like being above the ground. I don't want to get taken out by some Boeing team. No, but so here's the thing they didn't. Boeing didn't train pilots on the existence of this MCAS system, didn't boeing didn't train pilots on the existence of this mcast system. And a lot of the pilots I found out after the investigation they were unaware that was even on their aircraft. So they're flying this plane thinking, okay, yeah, it's the same plane, yeah, newer, bigger engines, whatever. They didn't even know that there's this thing in there that might push the nose of the plane down. So you know, it also relied on a single sensor and if that sensor failed, this system again that pushes the nose of the plane down could activate incorrectly. So from this, there were two fatal crashes Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines occurred after this MCAS forced the nose of the plane down repeatedly.
Speaker 1:Flight crews obviously had no idea what was happening, so therefore they had no idea how to correct it. So people said, oh, it must've been pilot error, it's like. Well, no, it's not my fault if I don't know what's going on, I can't diagnose the problem and let alone, even if I did diagnose the problem, know how to solve it, because no one trained me right. So the core failure? Obviously, boeing tried to solve a design challenge with automation and software. They failed to invest in training in the human beings who would be responsible for managing that automation. They relied on the tech instead of investing in decision support, orientation, crew readiness, situational awareness, those kinds of things. So, basically, boeing gave these pilots a new capability without giving them the cognitive framework to manage it. So it's like here's this new thing, go out and you'll be fine. Well, that's not how that stuff works. And so the end result of this one 346 lives lost worldwide grounding of the entire 737 max fleet. Boeing, I believe, lost over $20 billion in costs and legal claims it's probably even higher than that and then years of reputation damage in the aviation safety, which then compiles anytime you have any other problem right, that's, you know becomes the issue.
Speaker 1:So, like I said, the big, central theme of what we're talking about today is you know, just what problem does this solve? That's the central question of today's podcast and today's discussion. And what you know? It's a very simple, you know, it's a simple thought experiment to coming up with any new solution to anything. It's like well, what problem?
Speaker 1:We often come up with solutions to problems that don't exist sometimes, and when it comes down to these types of decisions, like most resource decisions are made reactively, not strategically. So the idea is okay, something went wrong, let's buy something to fix it. Okay, people say they don't feel confident or something's going on. Well, let's buy some gear, right, rather than investing in our people, let's go invest in a product, a system, an app and then just let our people figure it out. So you know you have to address some questions, right. Is this fix, addressing a root cause or just the symptoms? Are we solving for performance or just for optics? Right, and tools? I've also seen we'll get into this tools are often used as shortcuts for difficult conversations, or they're used in place of having a difficult conversation, and so really, the gear becomes a pacifier, not really a solution. So that's kind of big picture, greg, and I know you have some other examples there, but I'll stop and let you jump in here as well.
Speaker 2:Thanks. So first I didn't want to have this discussion based on the title, so when I first read you know what problem does this solve? The first thing I got is a ponytail Friday shirt wearing guy in the board meeting that's leaning back and asking that question with his arms above his head with his fingers interlaced Right.
Speaker 1:And then the second image I got that's the guy. No, no, no, no, no. But that's that's the guy trying to sound smart, not actually asking the wrong question, right? That's why I'm trying to describe that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the scientific term is douchebag the same douchebag has inside of his coat pocket, his wool coat pocket, a laminated card and there's a follow-up question is how do we scale this pocket laminated card? And there's a follow-up question is how do we scale this? And he has no idea that either of those questions are, you know, douchebag one-on-one, that they're just to make it look like he's paying attention and involved in it. Then I started reading into it and and when I got to the, the, the 737, I couldn't believe the numbers and I couldn't believe it was Boeing. But then you wrote something and it really stuck, it really resonated, and you wrote that most resource decisions are made reactively, not strategically. And we have a bunch of police officers and law enforcement corrections courts that listen to the show or that we know personally. And I would say, just change out Brian's sentence just a little. Most resource decisions are made reactively, not strategically. Now let's take that same sentence to the dojo floor. Now let's take it slide, stopping up to a police call where shots have been fired and somebody's down and maybe an officer's down. Now let's take it out to the training that we're doing on the shooting range.
Speaker 2:If we're making our decisions reactively and we're not implementing or inputting the new and incoming information strategically, then we're going to slide directly towards the problem at full speed, with no further chance of solving it than we had when we were on the outer ring circle in the drain looking at the problem. And what do I mean by that? I mean that you have to understand that if we don't create a cognitive framework for problems, then we're never going to solve it. And, Brian, you said you know, are we solving for performance or just for optics?
Speaker 2:Do you remember during this, a couple of years ago, within the last five years, where police agencies oh man, you can't have an American flag on your police uniform, okay, that's going to piss some people off. And then we went the other way. Well, you don't want to have shined black boots because that brings in the militant. What we are doing, Brian, is on a whim, or on one written complaint, or on hearing somebody say man, that certainly seems like it. You know, it's a point of agitation. We were changing policy and and it's the same answer over and over and over what? What thought did we put behind this before we decided to go forward and fix it Right?
Speaker 1:And and you bring up kind of reinforcing the point that you know this, this tool can be. When I said you know this, this a tool can be. When I said you know tools are often used as shortcuts for difficult conversations. So rather than having a difficult conversation, we wanted to point to the flag or the boots and say that's the problem it's like well you're that, that's clearly not the issue.
Speaker 2:Like you know, it's like what?
Speaker 1:what does that have what? What does someone's shoe have to really do with the situation? Or is that symbolizing something larger that alludes to the problem that you're actually getting at, but you don't know how to articulate it, so you can point. But you, but I can point to that, I can point to that thing. You know what I mean. So I say, well, that's gotta be it, it's, it's, it's the, it's the red hat you're wearing and it's like well, okay, no, it's not.
Speaker 1:That's a symbol of something that you don't like, so I want to get.
Speaker 2:I know you yeah, you had a good example of that, spurred a memory motion link for me. Oh yeah, and I'd love you to bring that up too. So I lived through something that most Americans have long forgotten and and let me be the historical record.
Speaker 2:So the civil war the civil war, being the musket man. So there was a thing that came out while I was a copper called anti-lock breaking, and they called it ABS. And we had a fleet full of, of, of, of, of, of, and they called it ABS. And we had a fleet full of Chev's. And then we had the other, the big gosh damn boats that I can't think of the name of them, that were out there as the Mark police cars, and all of them because there were fleet vehicles. They all came straight from General Motors with the ABS on it. Now, there wasn't a warning, there wasn't, by the way. We changed all the systems that we told you about before they were just on it. Now, there wasn't a warning, there wasn't. By the way, we changed all the systems that we told you about before they were just on there.
Speaker 2:And the idea behind it was sound, because it was supposed to allow a driver to maintain steering control and shorten stopping distance, and specifically for emergency situations like slippery surfaces, the gravel roads, those types of things where, if your wheels would lock up, you're going to skid and lose control. The only problem, without telling us about it and without the additional training Caprice Classic and the other one I still can't think of. They put them on the fleet vehicles and said, hey, let the let the gosh damn accidents begin. So what happened is that when you press down on it, you had first thing that came back was a pulse rate. The pedal would actually push back towards you and it was a rhythmic pattern like boop, boop, boop, and then, when it did that, it made a clunking sound in the firewall cluck, cluck, cluck. And so you thought something failed and you thought, holy shit, the car's falling apart and you weren't stopping. Well, you were stopping, you were slowing speed and lessening the inertia, but with the brake pushing back on you and that noise, you thought you had a systems failure. So people were just sliding through intersections and ramming the car in front of them and oversteering.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I could tell you the story. And we were in gosh damn, what's the name of that little city at eight mile, in Kelly Harper Woods maybe and end of a long pursuit and a dangerous situation with shooting during and after the pursuit. And Rick Buley came up because we called for another car and locals were on the scene and Rick Buley had the brand new sled on the fleet and he was pressing it and threw up his hands to tell us I'm coming, and went sliding right through the crime scene and almost killed all of us and took out a light pole, and so we went back to the administration. I mean, this all happened in a weekend, brian, and we're going like what the hell happened to our scout cars? And all of a sudden our supervisors came the general owners was literally across the street, came back and said oh, it's the ABS. So we nicknamed them the anti-STOT brakes because nobody could figure it out.
Speaker 2:Now, brian, with a short amount of time and with all the complaints that we had and all the dangers that happened to him, it evolved significantly because we were speaking directly to the people that were putting them on the cars and they were going oh wow, what a great test case. But I would ask you this. I would say wouldn't it have been great to try a UX experiment just for the hell of it?
Speaker 2:and say put some people out in the parking lot with, like you know, cones and water bags and stuff, and brian had never occurred. And and no, I'm gonna get on and say, oh yeah, we did all this, brian it never occurred.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, they, they, no, they, they. I'm sure they they tested it.
Speaker 2:But but you know, there was no, there was no there was no sharing of what that would be.
Speaker 1:no, and and that was the thing, because you mentioned that and I was like, oh my God, I still remember when I was like 16 years old, so I hadn't been driving legally for that long, right and so I had to lock up the brakes. Same thing Someone cut me off and they jumped out into traffic and I remember just slamming on the brakes and at that point I know the ABS had changed a little bit, but it was like this really rapid, like feeling on your foot which is really weird. And then so what did it automatically cause me to do is, oh my God, there's something wrong. And then I lift my foot up and then I have to put it back down. So the idea was that the ABS is there, you know it works.
Speaker 1:You stop faster because, rather than locking up the brakes and sliding through, you actually will stop faster. It's been proven to show that's a better system. But the first time you experience that you're like, oh my again, it's so counter to anything you've experienced so far that it's completely foreign. Until you have that experience unless you have, it was just. I still remember that. Exactly what intersection I was at too, because I almost clipped the person.
Speaker 2:Two completely different age groups. Brian is much older than I am. Two different things that we like. Brian's a clog fanatic and I certainly hate clogging.
Speaker 2:And we could go down and say the Merc Grand Marquis is that it Might be. And what happened is we both came up with the same experience. So to me that's significant, brian. And if we look at another airline thing, one of the things that we talk about in class is that when you think that your engine is stalled, what do we do? Intuitively, we know that what we need to do is bring the nose down to gain the thrust, the lift, get the engines going again. And what do we do though? We pull up because we're afraid of the ground again. And what do we do though? We pull up because we're afraid of the ground. So your natural reaction on the ABS was to fight the ABS, which was actually doing the work for you. But guess what, if we don't have a mental component and we don't have a training component, then it's going to be like gosh, damn, Martian arithmetic. So no, the Crown Vic, the Crown Victoria, was the other one that had it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So this is. You know, it's always interesting to me, kind of like, why tools are the default, and so it's really important to understand that, how much it affects us as humans. Obviously we're sort of primed for technological advancement. That's how the human race has stayed alive. We've had to adapt to some situation to make it easier for the purpose of survival. I mean, it's just ingrained in our DNA.
Speaker 1:But the tools often become this default for a number of fairly simple reasons. One tangible ROI right. I get a return on investment, it's easier to budget, it's easier to understand the cost and what I'm going to get back from that. It's much easier to show off hey, look at this thing, look at what we bought versus we'll look at this new capability of our people, or look at how they think now. So it's very, very easy just to point to it and say there's the camera, there's the metal detector, there's this. We have this thing now. This thing is going to save us, this thing's going to help us, we can rely on it, it's effective, it's been tested, it's been engineered and most of the time, really good and does exactly what it's supposed to do. I mean, I'm not bashing the tool or the technology itself. I'm bashing how we use and how we interact with it, and so it's easier to point at something. And then, just because as humans we have sort of that simplicity bias, right, we gravitate towards solutions that are easier to understand and implement.
Speaker 1:It's easier to equip a person than to train one. If I take you right, some random person off the street, and I go, okay, what is this person capable of? But then I put you in a uniform and I put gear on you and I give you a weapon system and I give you all this stuff. Well, suddenly, okay, well, this person, yeah, they've got all the tools they need. It's like giving someone you know, hey, here's your garage, completely built out for everything a carpenter would ever need. Wow, this is awesome. It's like, do you have any training in being a carpenter, cutting wood or anything? No, it's like, well, that's all useless. Then I mean, it's that part comes first, and so I'm not trying to oversimplify that. It really is that simple.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, and, as you know, with anything, with any organization, it's political safety, right, I can say, and which I would go one step further with political safety and said it just makes us feel better, right, if I get better gear right One. It's a better soundbite, it's a better headline. It's not going to cause friction with people or unions or culture or accountability. It's like, look, I did everything I could. I got my people the best gear out there. It's like okay, and we pat each other on the back for that. But it's like okay, and we pat each other on the back for that. But it's like sometimes it's just done to make us feel better and a big one.
Speaker 1:There's less accountability with that Meaning. There's sort of this I can avoid being introspective and really digging in deep, because tools don't challenge leadership decisions. They just don't. Tools aren't going to talk back to you, they're not going to say, hey, this is so messed up or we're being used incorrectly. The tool is just going to do exactly what it was designed to do, and so there's no feedback loop, there's no feedback mechanism. Well, training does that. Training actually says, oh shit, are we doing this right? Is this the right thing to do at?
Speaker 2:this time, Because now you're going through the steps of doing it Exactly. It'll magnify it, It'll shine a light on it. So to that end and you brought up a couple of great buckets there, Brian. And so if we talk about ROI, simplicity, political safety and introspection, if we just have those to throw some darts at you know Nico's a lieutenant on the fire department, so very proud of my son, Nico. It's amazing that he has time to do anything with all the fun he has.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, especially now he's got the grandparents to watch the kid and the dog anytime he wants. Exactly.
Speaker 2:So now you're reading me, so I'll give you an example. Federally mandated political safety one smoke alarms, okay, and we talk about smoke alarms for commercial and residential, but there's a glaring study that's been around for a good long time that says that conventional smoke alarms aren't effective at waking up children. In fact, only about 20% of the time are they able to do that. Okay, nobody's addressed that yet because the body count's not high enough. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So right now, the return of investment seems to be enough that, even though it's a political thing, nobody's touching it. Well then we talk about introspection, and I wrote down let's get ahead of this. Can you imagine the first couple of people? And, look, homelessness has been around since there's been people without homes. But I mean, if you talk about riding the rail and the old bum, you know cutting into the wood to say, hey, this place has got good stew. Or you know, watch it, this guy's got a shotgun or whatever else. Cops a long time ago and military, certainly, brian, you'll remember this came up with the idea of refugee camps. Refugee camp was a short-term solution for somebody that was displaced by a moment of crisis, and guess what those tend to turn into a long-term. Hey, we wanted to get ahead of this, but nobody thought what's the expiration date on this? When does this turn into a pumpkin? This is no longer a good solution. And now the hygiene and this and the waste and the you know, and some of them because of the drug use or the mental health challenge, and what happens is it gets out of control. But, brian, at the beginning we all had good intentions, we all patted ourselves on the back, going in right. Give you just one more. I remember when we had to get a new oven and remember we live in the middle of nowhere, so we had to order the shit from Denver. That takes a week to get there by rail and then to find a guy to install this system in our house and there was a little metal flange that he had installed on the ground and a metal flange on the bottom of the stove. And I was like, what's that for? And he says it's for tip overs. He said that the old stoves, you could grab them and when you tried to pull them away from the wall they would tip over and land on you and a lot of people died and so I called horseshit. And then you know what I found out A child injures themselves from furniture-related tip-overs every 30 minutes in the US and a death occurs every couple of weeks from this. So what it is is we don't know what we don't know. So when you're asking about the problem, okay, if we don't invest a little bit of time to really take a look at what problem we're solving, what we end up doing is solving for symptoms or solving for something that's on the periphery, a spiral and is that the best expenditure? Look, we're always talking about. I'll give you one gosh, damn more. You remember this?
Speaker 2:Back in the day I was one of probably five in the state of Michigan police rifle instructors. I got certified, went out to agencies and back then it was the M16A2, the M14, the M1 Garand. Those were the police semi-automatic rifles that people had. Why? Because the agencies were getting them from that government plan, remember. The government would outsource certain weapon systems and then police agencies could pick them up for zero. And then what happened is that some of them someone that went through the training that I went through could carry that weapon on duty. And then they came up with the rack where you had the shotgun on one side and you could have your police rifle on the other side.
Speaker 2:You know what the movement is now. The movement is now back then, every chief of police hated me. Nobody's going to police rifle. Why would we ever need this, brian? Look around now. Agencies are retiring their Rem 870s, saying the shotgun, the police shotgun, is too dangerous. We have to go to the police rifle. Now, when it comes to research, research light, when it comes to, I'll vote for the, the police rifle, democratic action, or or the loudest voice in the room, or some new chief or general that wants a point and say I brought the military the p38 that takes lead dog in the sled, and now we get an entire agency retrofitting their vehicles or getting a new decal or doing something else where they think they're on the right path, brian, but at the end of the day, it's the training that's a missing component If you invest in training you invest in your people.
Speaker 1:You invest in the cognitive mind. Well, that's the whole debate of training versus tools, right?
Speaker 1:It's what's the real ROI, what's the real return on investment? And sometimes you do have to quantify that, and I remember working with the Army years ago when we were implementing and giving the buy-off with the ASAT program, and they had to quantify it and say, well, it'll come down to basically the cost of a new pair of boots, and that's tangible. I can, I can understand that, I can, I can use that. But the, the, the, the idea about the training versus tools and what the real ROI is is you know, gear is just this, it's an at-bang solution. So it it. It can enhance your execution after, after a decision has already been made. It does not affect whether the decision was appropriate. So we're saying, we're saying we're, we're going to, we're going to fast forward, that, okay, this is going to happen again, we're going to likely run into this, so this is how we're going to respond to it. Better, right? I mean that's basically what you're saying, because buying something that helps improve your reaction time tells me you are accepting that the situation is going to happen again and you're choosing, you're making a choice. We're not going to do anything about that, we're just going to wait till it happens again, and then that's what we're going to do, and so that's the concept between training. Is that left of bang? Investment? Right, it teaches when to act, how to assess why certain behaviors emerge, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:But have you trained people to identify the situation where the tool is even needed? Have you shown them to recognize ambiguity, risk and prevent indicators? Because if you're, if we're not doing that, then then the tool just becomes an. It will eventually become another problem, another issue, another. We're eventually going to have to get a new one. You remember, oh, I did you send it to me. You just remind me because you brought up the smoke problem, another issue, another. We're eventually going to have to get a new one. You remember, oh, I think did you send it to me? It was just remind me, cause you brought up the smoke detector, one, but the fire, the first, the one of the fire alarms, where they said that you know they wanted to cut down on people pulling fire alarms uh uh, you know, just for no reason at all.
Speaker 1:So this one reached in it. It. It grabbed your arm and locked you in. So now you're sitting there watching a school start on fire. And then you got to choose Do I let everyone know, or do I burn to death, or do I not pull?
Speaker 2:the fire alarm and save myself. Think of that, Brian.
Speaker 1:And we go, that's we go, that's we do. Well, that's so stupid, it's like no, but that's the first iteration. Or that's how do. Well, that's so stupid, it's like no, but that's the first iteration, or that's. That's, that's how these things work. It's going okay here we got this new thing and we implement it. We don't realize, like the second third of effects, we don't say what else could happen from it, and so that that first model, there's going to be errors. The, the mcast system in the 737, fixed the problem. It just no one knew that. It solved the issue that had been created by putting these new, larger engines on and changing where they were at, on the wing or whatever. It solved that problem but it created a disaster, it created catastrophe. That was all completely avoiding things. So it's like those questions, you know, that's the kind of heart of the matter.
Speaker 2:To start, with Yep, and I would add this, so I don't remember the name. My memory's gone now, folks, I'm sorry. Fentanyl's a hell of a drug, lois. What's the gear turning point? Called for your TA-50 in the Marine Corps. Remember the place that was out at Penn where you had to go and there was a shipping thing and the SIF, the Consolidated Issuing Facility, exactly.
Speaker 2:So you know that I used to for Combat Hunter back in the day. I used to have to trek across the country with my little Sharpay Jaeger. And Jaeger had a buddy and I can't remember his buddy's name that worked for the Special Forces community I think it was Woolley or Woodsy or Woobie or whatever. That was out in Grand Junction and he manufactured boots and sleeping bags and gear specifically for the JSOC community. That was the best in the business, and so Jaeger was always getting that shit, you know, at the lead and had insider track information. And so I remember we met him out one time at that facility and he was going through some of the gear and he was a really nice guy. And so we were standing there and it was a bunch of colonels from the Senate and it was a bunch of generals that were listening in on the conversation. And there was one guy and I'll never remember his name, but he was a civilian advisor that came to audit what we were doing and he said you know, the question here is do I want them to have that set of boots or that sleeping bag in their TA-50 when they go to combat or do I want them to have Greg's training before they deploy, and everybody got quiet for a minute and said, well, why are we choosing that? And he goes. That's exactly what we're choosing for every dollar and minute and classroom that we were taking up.
Speaker 2:Brian, you remember when we were working for the Marine Corps and you, shelly, and I were in that shower with the open door, shitters, and that was the only place that we could do the training. We were all sitting on MRE boxes inside and projecting on the concrete wall, like at Flores or one of those places, and people were coming in and taking a shower after gym and everything and the cord kept getting unplugged or somebody would get electrocuted. And we have to slow down while we're doing CPR. We never invested the same money or mindset or anything in training until when, until the body bag stopped coming back. So the first time a body bag comes back, everybody goes full speed. Let's stop this. Whether it's cops, whether it's security, doesn't matter what it is, and let's take all these steps.
Speaker 2:And then there's a flurry of typing and all the shit goes on the news and everybody talks a good story and buys a new decal for the vehicle or red and blue lights or whatever right, and then what happens is time goes by and we forget all those lessons learned and we go back to doing shit the same way that we always did it. Until what? Until the next emergency comes up and that becomes the historical perspective that we go from. Is that, see, I told you we needed that, can opener, you know, new light, whatever else? We have to stop thinking like that. What we have to do is we have to have a practical answer, because you wrote it, and when you sent me the message that we were doing this, you wrote that no device will ever outperform good judgment under pressure.
Speaker 2:And I highlighted that right that meant more than any of those other things to me. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it does the work of three items. Yeah, it's cheap and it's unbreakable. But you know what, if you can't think your way out from under the situation, you'll never open the pouch that it's hidden in.
Speaker 1:And the kind of ironic thing to me with a lot of this is everyone is concerned which they should be about liability, and so it's like, okay, well, this is something we're liable for. So you knew or should have known, but lawsuits are rarely ever about your lack of hardware. That's not where it comes from. They're about lack of justification or their lack of training or decision making or all that stuff that we're talking about. And these mistakes don't happen because of outdated equipment. They're happening because of outdated thinking. And then, of course, some of the cases we're bringing up, the mistakes are happening again, not because of outdated equipment, because of new equipment, exactly the new thing, and it's going to cause issues.
Speaker 1:And it's like we come to the solution. We go, okay, we slap the table, like you said oh, I think this. And, yeah, we like what Bill thinks, and you know what Greg? Greg's one of our top guys at that, our top guys at that, so that's what he thinks. We're going with it. It's like, well, well, hang on, like maybe, greg, your opinion is completely correct, 100, right, and it's the standard and everyone should believe it and that's what you should do. But but your solution has nothing to do with the actual problem right it's, it's a solution to something, some extraneous factor, yep.
Speaker 1:Yep, right, and again it goes back to just how you know we are. And man, when I anything, I seen something new coming down, right, it's the whole, you know you. Okay, great, you gave them a scalpel, but you didn't teach them anything about anatomy. You gave them this thing, but you didn't teach them about the context of it. So it just becomes this abstract thing that I just point to and you know what it just works, or it's just this thing that we do, and so when something happens and it goes wrong, I'm, I'm fucked, I'm screwed I mean, you know it's like, come on so and I, you know, and obviously we're, we're all about.
Speaker 1:We're all about people and humans and and people I've heard described as is, you know, the human weapon system, and that that's fine. Just the human system you want to, you call it, that, that's fine. But but you know, tools are, are inert objects, they, they, they, the, the person utilizing the tool is, is the weapon system. It's not, it's not a gun, it's the person operating the gun.
Speaker 1:It's not, you know, it's a human interaction with it. And then this goes to how I look at all issues. Like you know, it's not that drugs aren't the problem, it's drug addiction and people's interaction with the drugs that are the problem. The gun is a piece of metal sitting on a freaking table, so it's the's interaction with the drugs that are the problem. The gun is a piece of metal sitting on a fricking table, so it's the human interaction with the gun that the problem is. And so it all comes back down to that.
Speaker 1:But when you, when you do that, that you're, you're, you're one, you're assigning responsibility to people, and everyone loves doing that in certain situations and saying you're the problem and this is what it is and they got to go. But when it comes to then you accepting responsibility for that, it's like, well, no, if I would have had a better tool or if we would have had this thing, then I wouldn't have done that. It's like, no, we're not, we haven't mastered sort of vanilla yet, we haven't mastered basics yet. So, so why are we doing this thing when that situation or that, that solution to that problem, we could just avoid the problem in the first place, and I don't think we do that right.
Speaker 1:We're not very good at well, which is we make little strides or advancements, or people will say it and they'll go, hey, yeah, that's a great concept or idea. And then they'll go buy the new thing and it's like, well, wait a minute.
Speaker 2:And tell you to stand down because, well, you don't know, or not even tell you to stand down.
Speaker 1:So I'm like, yeah, we'd love to do that, but we don't have the money. It's like, yes, you do.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm trying to say, brian. Turn it into a choice. They turn it into a decision and try to get you on board going you, and try to get you on board going. You just don't understand the pressure we're under. You know this is an immediate thing that we need to do. Yeah, okay, and Wiggies, that's it. Wiggies, the best tools in the world for special forces. Folks, look up Wiggiescom and if you go there, make sure you give a shout-out to Brian and I Holy shit, my memory is horrible. Look back in the day. You know that the Edge was the premier self-defense shooting shoot move and communicate academy for everybody.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that we did on the range is we had these little baby paper plates because they were very cheap at the dollar store, the little white ones with the corrugated edge that were probably I don't know six inches around, and then we had much less what would that be? Three-inch diameter, and then the other ones that were probably six inch diameter right, no shit about math and a staple gun, and we would staple those up, and what you were taught to do is, from the holster, then from the ready, from whatever position that you were, you had to put a number of rounds in each one of those targets. Then we transitioned to a paper target that was significantly bigger, with a small mark that was on it, and it was that hit the small mark with your bullet and then make each subsequent bullet touch the hole from the first bullet, and we would work on that under speed and duress, and then, at the end of the day, we turned the target over and it was a human target with all the X-rings and the 10 rings and everything else on it, and people go holy shit, I can't believe I shot that. Well, then guess what we did? We deconstructed them by having them shoot at those targets and they couldn't hit a gosh damn thing.
Speaker 2:So what's the worst thing when you're shooting? It's you, how you think under pressure, the pressure that you put yourself under because the tool that you have, the firearm and the bullets, are manufactured to specification to fire and function the same way every time. So if you put them in a machine and a vice and held them there, they would never miss. There would have to be a malfunction for them to miss. So what's the thing that continues to go wrong with systems? And that's the person, the human capital that you have out on the street every day, no matter what that human is doing, whether they're a school security guard or they're working for your HR or anything else. It's how they perceive, anticipate, how they react to whatever is going on.
Speaker 2:And, brian, I can tell there's still a problem because we still, after the shooting at the Jewish Museum, what do we get? We get, oh, pre-attack indications. Museum what do we get? We get, oh, pre-attack indications. Let's look them up. Yeah, okay, let's laminate that. Just saying pre-attack, that takes us down the wrong road. Understanding anomalous behavior is much more important than whether it's a nine millimeter or 40 cal. But why do we fight that Lowest common denominator? It's much easier to go to my range instructor, it's much easier to go to my driving instructor or my self-defense instructor and ask them what's the flavor of the day? Nobody would argue right now. Jiu-jitsu is the flavor of the day for police. Okay, is that going to be the same in 11 years? Nope, not even close. Okay, and I'll predict that right now.
Speaker 2:I won't be around.
Speaker 1:So it's funny how fast it went from. It went from. You know. Hey, all the data and all the research shows that. You know, mobility is survivability and if you go to the ground you are X amount more likely to get killed or get into this situation or have something bad happen to you. So you don't ever want to, you know, be on the ground. And then that was quickly reversed. You're going to the ground and it's like again what, what, what, what, what?
Speaker 2:just had a complete flip flop there, or is it like what's my argument? Constantly with on coffee table? Okay, writes a number of books Very popular is out there. First of all, he's not a police expert. He was you don book. It's very popular, he's out there. First of all, he's not a police expert. You don't qualify as a police expert by speaking to cops or writing a book to cops. That's not how that works. Second part of that is a lot of his research is based on SLA Marshall's work and when you go back and you start taking a look at faulty research methods, how many people can we in our industry go back and point to where they went and took the wrong exit, brian, and just stayed with it for a good long time?
Speaker 2:And there's stuff people still quote it and you know it's like anybody in situational awareness that says, hey, the OODA loop is the most important thing, cool your jets, romeo. The problem is that you're not seeing the big picture because you're too close to it and you're making money. The idea is, put your boots on the ground inside of that circle you know doing Kodokan Judo and fight your way out. Well, how do you do that? Good judgment under pressure. And what does that mean Cognitive. What does that mean? Strategy If you use a good strategy, you will overcome any opponent, and that means predicting and not getting into the situation. So what happened with the airlines? The airline goes let's just put on a bigger engine. And somebody in the back of the room yelled out you know what? That's brilliant. We already got pilots that can do that. And then when they had a problem, what did they do? What did they do? What was their? What was their flash? To bang on that, brian.
Speaker 2:Well, let's put another machine on machine and it's like hang on here, we're in a new domain.
Speaker 1:We've lost the plot here on what we're trying to do, and those are some of the common mistakes in any type of resource allocation.
Speaker 1:You brought it up as like, okay, we're choosing between something, or there's a finite amount of resources and time, right, so we have to figure out what's the ROI, what's the best bang for the buck, and so, like we've talked about, the tech solution is always the simple answer.
Speaker 1:But if I'm not also incorporating some sort of training timeline and pipeline and implementation, detailed implementation plan, that could completely backfire. And then you know, you, if you. So that means if you have a new tool, new piece of gear, but you're still using old SOPs, that 737 is going to crash, like you're, you're, it's going to crash and burn and kill everyone, so so that that's the whole thing. So it's like, if you're going to have these hardware upgrades, you have to have sort of or software or, you know, mindset upgrade or training upgrade for the individual, and I think that that's always the necessity, and then from that you don't always necessarily need a hardware upgrade. So you're, if you're, if you're cutting out that training to afford some piece of gear, whatever that is like, you have to realize that then and say, well, you have to give something.
Speaker 1:You have to give something up in order to gain something, right? Always, no matter what it is, you always have to give something up in order to gain something. So what are you gaining versus what you're giving up? Are you getting the value there? That's just a life you know you could. That's just a life motto. Right, you have to give something up in order to gain something, but as long as what you're gaining is greater, has greater return on investment, is more effective for you, is a net positive than what you're giving up, then you're doing okay, right. You're doing good, right, but that's not always the case in these. And so the buy before we analyze it. This is going to make us safer. That's not a strategy. It's just not.
Speaker 1:I mean and and and that's the I. It's where are you starting with? This? I think is my biggest issue with this. And plus, you know you just talked about all the range stuff and, and I agree and I'm not bashing anything that people are doing, and I certainly don't get into tactics, techniques and procedures, you know.
Speaker 1:But when you say like, hey, you got to be able to think critically under pressure, you got to. You know, we got to have this level of skill it's like, well, you're still talking about the human and a lot of that stuff came from especially like the tier one military units, and it's like, well, look, they can think through the situation and think under pressure because it there isn't pressure yet, because they've fired so many gosh darn rounds that they can't miss if they tried right. I mean, it's just like the tier one, the special mission units that do a lot of like hostage rescue stuff, like that. Right, I've trained and worked with those guys. And it's like we do so many reps in training that you can, you, you will, you just won't get it wrong. You can't because you only know how to do this right thing. So when something comes up that's non-standard, you're not overwhelmed in this situation. Your cognitive load is less because you've done it so many times. Well, guess what that takes years and years and years and years of training experience to get to.
Speaker 1:So the military tier one unit. Well, they have that time, they have that luxury, they have that budget, they can afford to do that. But most places can't. Those are the only types of places that you can get away with that kind of stuff at, and so it's like we're not even at where our failures are really happening.
Speaker 1:And the reason I was bringing up the range stuff is in the decision-making. In that too, that has to do with with the, the sort of the cognitive load in those situations. But more gear is equals more complexity, which equals more points of failure. I mean, the more things you throw at it, the more likely something is to go wrong. And so each new tool you introduce, you got to reorient, you got to get reps, you got to have the right context to make it use effectively. And so if you're doing all of that additional training that you know you're going to have to do when we get this new thing, is it worth it? Or do we just do some new type of training, save our money on the new thing and figure out what the real problem is? And it's like that analysis is never done.
Speaker 2:Let's shit in a punch bowl, shall we? And let's serve it up fresh to everybody, because we get a lot of trainers that are on here too. So if you're a cop and you're a trainer, answer the following question have you ever been on a homicide or a suicide where it was a .22 long rifle?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what about a .32? What about a .38? What about a .9? Go all the way through the different calibers to the worst handgun, which was a single shot pocket Derringer, all the way up to an M98 Barrett with a .50 cal. You've seen them all. Okay, so it's more important for shot placement, but we all talk about stopping power.
Speaker 1:Why do we talk about stopping power? Because of fear.
Speaker 2:Why do we talk about it? For fear? Because we saw the Norinco bank robbery. We saw the West Hollywood. We saw the agents in Florida get overwhelmed when they went to make the traffic stop and the guys outgunned them. We saw the coppers from California Highway Patrol laying on the slab in the morgue and we say never again, that's never going to happen.
Speaker 2:So we have leather gear with higher capacity magazines, and then you know now what we're doing is we're chasing the gear. And you know, what we should be chasing is the critical thinking. Because if you can outthink a cunning opponent, we know from the pathology that you can kill somebody with a 22 or a 38 or a 32 or a gosh damn slingshot, you know or a nut or a bolt that came off the neighbor's lawnmower. So so we understand physics. That's something we can wrap our brains around. But what we don't understand is how critical thinking will trump any new tool, any new resource that you try to bring to bear.
Speaker 2:The problem, the age-old problem, before deployment in Iraq what's the turning radius on this Vick? And none of them knew. And how far can it run if you get shot in the oil pan? And none of them knew. And, brian, you remember that you, teacher and I, we dropped the mic and walked off the range because we didn't want to die with those idiots when they were in combat. They were shipping all that gear over and not one person asked the question hey, what happens if we hit and the airbag deploys? Is the Vic out of service? What happens if we get T-boned in the intersection and the vehicle shuts off? You remember those and Brian, that's that now I don't know time, but that's like 20 years ago now that we were asking those questions.
Speaker 2:What happened to that? What happened to the curiosity, brian, where all of a sudden somebody in the back, gutenberg, raises their hand and says I'm a Newton, better, this doesn't sound like the best idea, but we've gone past that, because new shit looks cool and it's a race gun. And now I want to be like a fast roper. That's not your job. The more time you're spending on the range, you're not on the road. The more time you're spending flipping those tires, you're not out meeting your community. Now do I say that they can exist in the same space? Of course they can, but that's what you should be working on. You should be working on your strategic, operational, tactical plans, not buying new gear and spending all that money you don't have here's it comes down to.
Speaker 1:You know the kind of like well, what questions should we be asking? And how do we analyze? It how do we get to the kind of how do we actually scope the problem? And these are really good questions to ask, but the problem is they have been kind of like you alluded to of your person in the board meeting at the beginning of this talk of how do we scale this. It's like wait, you haven't solved, the haven't solved the problem yet, or what?
Speaker 1:problem does this solve? It's it's not. It's not that, though, like cause. What those, those questions do is. It forces you to define, clearly define what the problem is, and when you go through the simple thought experiments, you go oh wait a minute, we minute, we're not really approaching this correctly or we're not being clear in this area, and so I always do. That, obviously, is what problems are solved. But it's like, what is the actual performance gap?
Speaker 1:I actually just even this morning you saw Gary Klein, dr Klein, who we had on, who we love, he posted something about. He's like look, when people do historical perspective and they do these case studies or do whatever we're all feeling obsessed with, or we get enlightened to what happened, meaning, okay, here was the time, here's the maps, here's the decision that was made, here's the caliber or here's this, whatever. It's like well, but we don't ever get into sort of well, what contributed to these decisions? Why did they do that? What were all of these contributing factors? Because if I can break those down into three biggest ones, I know well these are the three biggest concerns and then I can go back to other situations. Well, wait a minute, these are all the same three. Wait, these are the same three contributing factors.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Sometimes it's something you never expected. It's dehydration, it's lack of sleep, it's that person didn't understand the graffiti.
Speaker 1:It's something simple. Many, many times it's saying what's his name? Gabriel Princip. You know assassinated Archduke, you know Fernandin, and that started World War I. It's like, no, no, that was not, that's not, that was.
Speaker 2:What did that become?
Speaker 1:It's like no, no, that was not. That's not. That was that. What did that become? It was no, that was that lit the kindling that was sitting there soaking in gasoline and mounting and mounting and mounting. But but all that stuff was the issue, not him carrying out that one single act. It wasn't, wasn't that? It was all of this other stuff. And so it's like what is the performance gap? What are the costs of not investing in our people? And even the? I see it pop. I still see it pop up, like once a year on LinkedIn where someone posts the. You know it was. Maybe it was attributed to Steve Jobs or whoever. Probably no one ever said this, but it was.
Speaker 1:It's like clickbait, but it's like, well, where. It's like they said, well, you know, hey, we got to train up these people, we got to do all this. And it's like, well, what if we train them up and we give them all these skills and all these resources and they leave and they go to another company? And the response is okay, well, what if we do all that stuff? Or what if we don't do any of that and they stay here and they don't leave? And it's like, oh, yeah, I get that. You have to look at it in that way. But where these questions? Where do most of our critical incidents begin and where do they go wrong? Like, where did it actually begin? Where did this start? Because we often get laser focused on just that. Here's the problem. It's like no, no, no, no Wind, that tape back. So where?
Speaker 2:did that begin? I love the NTSB, brian. Why? Because they're the most introspective agency that we know. They're constantly going. How many hours did he fly? What plane was it? What was the barometric pressure? What were the weather conditions at the station? What was the radio? Look, we never do that. What we do is we get a PIO to stand in front of people and go look he had a gun. Look he had a gun. Look here, while we slow down the tape, he had a gun and turned on our officers. Why? Because, again, fear drives how we're, after action, reviewing those incidents. Yeah, and we see that. We see that every day.
Speaker 2:You I'll tell you what you epitomize this discussion when you sent me if you removed all your high speed gear, would your people still make good decisions? You know what? If you're listening to the sound of my voice, write down Brian's words and ask yourself that question. And then ask a friend that question If you removed all the high-speed tack gear, all that cool stuff that you got, would your people on the road still be making good decisions? Would your people in the classroom, would your employee at the cashier or at customer service? Because that's what it applies to. It applies to improving yourself, right.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because it's like okay, if you got rid of all of the tools, would the person still be able to solve the problem? Would they still be able to do it? But here's the thing people will not. How many organizations do we work with where they are unwilling to answer that or ask that question? Because now what? Well, now I know, now I know what the problem is. Now I'm liable for it if something happens. We have staffing, people we still need.
Speaker 1:It's like, well, that's not, you just identified a problem, like you give. You always give the example. You know everyone's got someone when things go wrong and he got person a is on it. It's like who's there? Oh, person a, send them everything they need, just just do what they tell you. Wait, who's there? Oh, person b, get them out of there and go send person a. It's like, well, if you already know that, right now you know you've identified what the fucking problem is and and so you actually are liable now, because if you can go back and say that, and you knew, then it's dead weight. At that point they're not providing a value to the organization.
Speaker 2:I had one personal situation I'd like to share because you know I want to tell my story. So here we are in Afghanistan working with the Ministry of Interior. So here we are in Afghanistan working with the Ministry of Interior and they say listen, working with our coalition partners, we'd like to develop a patch, because patches were more important than coins back then. And let's have a good design patch. And every single one of them had a rifle and a lightning bolt and a machete and an explosion and all those other things. And I said, well, what about Shauna Bashana? What about standing shoulder to shoulder? And they go okay, well, we can put that on there, of course, but what else can we put on? I go wheelbarrow and a shovel and a rake, and they laughed me out of the room, brian, they laughed me out of the room.
Speaker 2:A couple of weeks later I get a call and go hey, can you come back and see General? I can't pronounce his name. And I go, yeah, and we go back and here's all the reps in the room and they go hey, we like that patch design. You know what. We are so hung up on being the force. You know that in other countries, when you see a shield, that means defense. When you see that on an American patch, that means we're going to use the shield to beat you down and then hook you up and drag you out of there.
Speaker 2:You know, it's all in perception. And the perception of having the high speed equipment is for you to placate the people that work with you and for them not to be scared. And right now, take a big dose of SDF up because you're saying I'm not afraid when I go on the road. Of course you are. If you weren't, you wouldn't have all that stuff. You would invest in your A game, and your A game is critical thinking. That's the performance gap. You know what? Report writing talking to people walking up and carrying on a conversation, brian, that's where your money is right there, because if you can do that and you can shoot reasonably well, you'll be fine. Right, but that's not where we start thinking, would you agree? I mean, you're an expert, a subject matter expert.
Speaker 1:I am but and that goes back to a lot of that really has to do with how we measure things right. And there's a great I don't know who said it, I think John Peters uses it a lot where it's you know, not everything that we measure matters and not everything that matters gets measured. And so how do you do that? And this goes into even the PT standards, physical training and how that stuff changes, and everyone's like, well, you should be able to do this and you should have to. It's like in no way let me be very clear in no way do any of those exercises and the time you get on those exercises translate to how you will perform your job under pressure. You just don't. Obviously, you want to be in better shape, you want to do this, but that's not the thing. But because I can measure it, because I can time your mile run, greg, because I can count how many pull-ups you can do, Well, it's easy for me. But I can measure or I can score your target. Right, I can score that. I can say, well, here's the number and that's either a pass or that's a fail, or that's need retraining or new this, and so it's very simple. It's very, very, very, very fucking simple, right? Is it inches? Is it meters? Is it money? How are we measuring this? It's like, well, what about outcomes?
Speaker 1:And this has gone even, especially with policy too. I mean, how many times have you seen like a politician or someone be like, oh and we spent this much money on this initiative? It's like that's not a measurement of performance. The amount of money you spent, that's the cost. That's not measuring the outcome. What did we get from that? What came of doing this? What came from and and and? Because it's a little bit more complex, people stay away from it and they go. I can't justify that in a budget. It's like, well, if you're thinking in terms of yearly budgets, then you're fucked, you're, there will be zero improvement.
Speaker 1:You know and that's my biggest thing about any plan coming in, especially I always. You know, politicians are just a great example. No one goes running for the mayor of a metropolitan city saying here's my 10-, 15 and 20-year plan for reducing crime in the city. Not one fucking one does that. Why? Because, well, that's kind of hard to measure. But I can point at this number thing right here, even though that might have to do with the well, we were on a lockdown and things changed and then the economy changed and that's like all of these extraneous factors might have been the issue, that not anything that you did. In fact, some of the stuff that you did may have had a negative impact on it. So we don't know how to measure this stuff, and that's just very. Then it becomes implicitly hard to understand as a human what I'm getting out of something, because I have to see it.
Speaker 1:I have to feel it, even our private sector clients, greg, what did we hear? From someone who said you know what? I was hesitant, I didn't buy into any of this stuff. But you know what Everyone said you guys were the best and you got to bring them in. And, oh my God, I am completely bought in. I never knew we were going to get this much out of it. I never knew that was going to happen. Because and why? Because?
Speaker 2:they've never seen anything like that. You get results and they saw tangible results, Brian, last night on the news Blagojevich from Illinois, you're right, oh boy. Blago Lagogevich from Illinois. You're right, oh boy, he was on pointing and counseling people and taking them to task and I'm thinking, wow, did you learn?
Speaker 1:that when you were in prison. Well, that's the thing. So here's the thing about him. He was kind of railroaded by political corruption and he was also a part of political corruption. So it's like you can't be the perpetrator and the victim Like that doesn't work.
Speaker 2:But what I thought and wrote down when I was watching him last night. And you're spot on and I love that Brian's a Chicago boy when he talks about laws and legal and bending rules and stuff, I listen because I understand he's got a different perspective. But I was thinking last night when I was watching him that you know what you will see an increase in your home security if you only have a sign that says this property is protected by so-and-so alarm system. It's a fact and if you put that up okay, if you close your gate, just latch your gate when you go to work it will increase your safety and security at home.
Speaker 2:But, folks, if your life depends on it, at the end of the day it's just a fucking sign and somebody is going to call you on it and somebody is going to climb that fence and they're going to poke their head in your house. So are you prepared for that? So all these talismans, all these totems that you're waving out there, hey, this thing is going to be it, it's the, there's going to be a new thing, and guns and ammo is going to copy on it and car and driver.
Speaker 2:And now you're going to say was that? Did we save a life by spending that 1.8 or 3.6 or whatever million dollars? And and I'll shut up after I say this Do you remember the gosh damn camouflage pattern for the Navy that made it impossible if you fell?
Speaker 1:overboard To see.
Speaker 2:Okay, do I need to say more? And anybody out there that's in? The Navy thank you Okay, but remember we used to be role players and it was like what the hell is that? Well if somebody thought that one out come on, come on.
Speaker 1:Where are we? Where are we in?
Speaker 2:this and you know what, if you removed all that high-speed gear, are your people still making good decisions? And if they're not, you're wrong and it's okay to throw in the towel and back up and start over Tabula rasa. Reset is not a bad place to be sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know again, I'm not. You know again, I'm not, you know, anti-gear or anti-new tech. I, I, just I. I don't think a lot of places need to be concerned with it, meaning some of those things are going to work themselves out over time and there's always going to be a new thing. You don't have to be on top of every little thing that's that's happening in new things. It's just not because some of them are going to go away and some of them are going to stick around, and when it sticks around, go, okay, I guess I'll use that then. I mean, it's not a lack of innovation or not being forward thinking, it's going well. Here's what we know works and that's going to be the bedrock foundation of everything that we do.
Speaker 1:And then, as new things come in, right, I can ask the appropriate questions, adopt them.
Speaker 1:If I think it'll help me in the way we do things, because it should come from you, how many places have we been where it's like, well, you know, we got to get them better at this and their decision making needs to get a little bit better? And you know it's difficult because it's complex? It's like, well, you know, we got to get them better at this and their decision-making needs to get a little bit better. And you know it's difficult because it's complex. It's like here does this decision, this thing you're about to do, is it aligned with the vision, the mission and the values of your organization? Oh no, okay, then don't fucking do it, you got it. Or change the vision, mission and values, or change We'll fucking do it, you got it. Or change the vision, mission and values, or change what it is that you're doing. All right, if that's what you have, because then you'll identify oh wait, a minute, we're not doing things correctly. We actually do have to do this, and it's you are an influencer, Brian no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Stay proficient and qualified in different weapon systems, right? So it was a whole bunch of different ones, and so the way I shot was like with my supporting hand, which is my left hand, I had a specific way, which a lot of people do, and I would sort of have my thumb pointed straight out accompanying that side or accompanying my hand if it was in a pistol. And it's like because people go, well, you can hold it this way and then you can move this over and you can move your arm here and do that, and I go, yeah, that's great, but here's the thing this manner in which I hold this pistol is the exact same way I can hold that M4 and that Rem A70 and that M203. And so I learned one way and I can use it in a whole bunch of different weapon systems in different situations, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So it's not go, I don't have to think about it, it becomes the way I do things. And it was like such a simple way for some people to see like, oh, I get it, if you do thing one way and you can use that in a multitude of of uses, that's better than learning 17 different things or or 10 different ways of doing something or all these different. It's like, dude, you gotta simplify, you gotta take the, the. It's like it's like your first deployment or first time ever doing something, compared to like later in life. Like you know, my first deployment, dude, I had every mag pouch filled. I had a drop, you know mag pouch that I carried and it was on man. And then years later I was like hey, do you have a? Anyone got a rifle or pistol for me to carry, cause I would love to have one? Anyone got a rifle or pistol for?
Speaker 2:me to carry Because I would love to have one. It's like get rid of all that stuff. Think about that with your TA-50. I remember every time that I deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, the military sent me with every piece of issued gear that I had. And there was me with front and back and duffel bag, drag and everything else, until I got to my unit that was going to start my rotation through that country. And guess what I did? I threw everything in a Connex and when I was flying back out of that country they reintroduced me with all that gear.
Speaker 2:It was not one of those items I ever used, so turning that shit back in was pretty easy. What happens is you're taking up part of my load that could be used for other things salient things that we sat down and thought about and said this trumps that. No fight there. And then the second part is Brian. A cognitive efficiency makes it easier for me when, in a situation, it takes items off of the table so I can consider the products at hand and come up with a strategy not be reactive mode all the time.
Speaker 2:So these are the problems we need to be solving, buddy. This is it.
Speaker 1:And I guess my kind of final word would just be that you know, if you can afford the gear and the training, great. But if you have to choose, man, I just always choose people, always bet on people. I agree, they're going to be there anyway. They're always. They always have to have a person there, so why wouldn't you want to invest in that individual as much as possible?
Speaker 2:And Brian, if I had to give a final quote because it's a great episode, I love talking about it it would be to quote Balin out loud it's raining vaginas, so I mean that just epitomizes how I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 1:I'm not familiar with that one.
Speaker 2:That's a young girl that has Tourette's and a great show, and every once in a while she slips a zinger out in the public and just you watch how people get fallen in with that. So I'll send you a photo. Yeah, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you lost me on that one, I'm going to have to look that up on YouTube after this, unless it's not on YouTube Alien Out Loud, my favorite show now.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. All right, I'm going to have to do my homework on that one, but all right. Well, we covered a lot. If anyone obviously has any questions, just reach out to us humanbehaviorpodcasts at gmailcom. Go to the Patreon. There's more on there. You can get recap of everything we talked about. You can ask us questions and give us ideas on there or things that you were thinking about. And yeah, I think that's about it, but we covered a lot.
Speaker 2:There's a return on your request, but I appreciate everyone. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I appreciate everyone for tuning in and for our Patreon members who support us. Keep up the suggestions and questions we like hearing from you all. Thank you all for listening to the episode and then if you could give us a like or a thumbs up or rating in the best way. Even if you can't do the Patreon, just share an episode with a friend, say, hey, check these guys out. It really helps us out a lot in getting the message out. So I would appreciate that. But thanks everyone, and don't forget that training changes behavior.
