The WAY to WOW Shows
The 24-Episode Campaign: Execution 8
May 19, 2026
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:00] Who [music] are you? And where are you going?

[0:07] >> [music]

[0:08] >> What do you want? Hello and welcome to Business Lessons from the Military. I'm your host Kevin Bemel and I'm here every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time. Although you may be looking at your clock and going, "Wait a minute, it's not 10:00 a.m. It's almost 10:30." Yes, I I had a court hearing this morning and uh it it's, you know, one of those uh situations where um you know, a few minutes can make a difference uh for, you know, for one of the and in this case it's a trust for

[0:45] which I'm a trustee and so I had to delay the start in order to make sure that things were uh proceeding post-hearing um the way they needed to be. So, um I beg your indulgence for being late today, but but in any event, thank you very much for for joining me. So, today we're I'm going to be concluding the second part of the three-part 24-episode campaign uh that I've been talking about now for I believe this is the 16th

[1:20] episode of the campaign and um going to be wrapping up the execution phase with uh the topic being when doctrine becomes dogma. So, um you know, we the the the sort of central idea uh behind this series is to look at um is to look at doctrine uh across all the service branches of the American military and sort of distill them all down to a set of principles that we can

[1:58] apply to our businesses and professional practices to make them more successful. And it's good to have it's good to have it's not good to have dogma. It's good to have doctrine because that is a foundational element on which we can stand as we work on you know, building, growing our businesses, working with our clients, etc. However, we [clears throat] don't want to get so hidebound that progress is actually held back. You know, in service of doctrine because

[2:34] then the doctrine has become dogmatic and it's no longer helping us, it's harming us. So,

[2:43] >> [clears throat]

[2:43] >> if we think about doctrine as as a concept, so it's it's it's dealing with processes, it's dealing with playbooks, it's dealing with best practices and standard operation standard operating procedures, SOPs. So, um these at least at first, they they these systems, they create consistency which allows us to move more quickly, to stay aligned with our goals and the values of our company

[3:18] and they give us scalability. But over time, something not at all positive begins to happen and that is the these these frameworks calcify and they become unquestioned truths. So, um un- unlike how I deal with um this these these topics in this show where I typically start with a military example, I'm actually going to start give you a just a small business example where doctrine became

[3:56] dogma to the detriment of the company. So, I don't know if I've talked about this very much in this show, but lifelong fan of Walt Disney and the the original company he built, Walt Disney Productions with his brother Roy, the classic move the classic animated movies especially whether it's Snow White or Alice in Wonderland etc. And of course I worked at Disneyland for a few years. I was a professional dancer, you know,

[4:31] in the parades. And so, after Walt Disney died in 1966, this this company that had been enormously creative was left under the guidance of Roy Disney who really he was the business brains behind the company, not really the creative brains. And over the next 10 15 years or so, the the mantra of the company became

[5:08] what would Walt do? Now, in the beginning I think that that was somewhat beneficial and they did some good work. So, if you've ever seen the animated version of Robin Hood, it's an absolutely charming movie. I I don't know that it reaches the creative you know, greatness of you know, Sleeping Beauty or or even the charm of 101 Dalmatians, but it's certainly a solid movie, great music etc. But over time this mantra [clears throat] of what would Walt do

[5:43] caused the company to absolutely stagnate. And it's what led to uh well, be because the creativity of the company stagnated, the company fell behind financially. And that's what eventually led to it being um essentially acquired and turned into the modern-day Walt Disney company. Um and [clears throat] I'm not going to get into what the company is doing now. That's a whole somewhat political discussion, but the the the when um

[6:20] when Walt Disney's son-in-law, Ron Miller, uh took over uh running the company, basically, um while I think, you know, I I don't know Ron Miller, never met him. I think he was a reasonably good executive as as such things go. He didn't have the creative vision that was necessary to run the company, and he was too married to the idea of what would his illustrious father-in-law have done, rather than crafting a creative vision going forward that would continue to inspire the

[6:57] people who worked at the company, who were creating its movies, its television shows, theme park attractions, et cetera. Right? And so, that that doctrine of what would Walt do in the sense of continuing to be creative became dogmatic to the point where it almost ruined the company. Uh and so, we need to guard against this. So,

[7:22] >> [clears throat and cough]

[7:23] >> there are few, if any, un uh questionable truths, whether it's in the military or whether it's in business. And so, we have to be willing to re-examine doctrine at times to make sure that it's still fulfilling the purpose for which it exists. Okay, and so that's that's what we're going to be talking about today. So, military doctrine is supposed to first of all organize thinking to make sure that various

[8:01] issues are considered and considered in an ordered way so that risk is minimized as much as possible and military operations can be as successful as possible, right? That's number one. It also exists to standardize operations so that we're not having to create battle plans from scratch every time an operation needs to be mounted. It also helps accelerate decision-making so that if something has to happen,

[8:36] again, [clears throat] we don't need to create decision matrix from scratch. We can look at existing decision matrix and determine how to move through them most quickly. And then finally, they create a basis for a shared understanding, right? So, we don't need to be explaining everything because to the extent that current doctrine is being applied and everybody understands that doctrine, so then we we have a common language from

[9:11] which to examine a particular operation, whether it's in the planning, in the execution, or in the after-action review. So, the danger of dogma is when leaders apply the doctrine mechanically, especially if it's old doctrine that hasn't been recently reviewed. All right, because then um tradition is being confused with effectiveness. And and and then resistance to change

[9:47] builds up in spite of the fact that conditions may have changed. So, in military history, rigid adherence to outdated doctrines has repeatedly led to to disaster. So, I'm I'm going to talk about two two examples real real quickly here. One is the vaunted Maginot Line. So, in World War II, France heavily invested in the Maginot Line. It was a a string of fortifications that was designed to

[10:23] protect them from German military aggression. Right? So, coming out of World War II, I'm sorry, coming out of World War I, where Germany had been the aggressor, they had attacked France. France didn't want to have to deal with that again, and so they built up these static fortifications. So, the what they what what the French learned from the First World War about trench warfare, static defenses, and and sort of attritional conflict, they they assumed

[10:58] that that was what a future war was going to be about. The problem was by the time the Maginot Line was finished, it was obsolete because warfare had become more mobile. The tank, which had just really was a a fairly new development in World War I, had had become a primary aspect of ground warfare by the the you know, by by 1930s. And so,

[11:33] static warfare had been replaced with uh with with active warfare with armored columns with aircraft that that that could dive bomb. And with the the combined arms of air, land, tanks, um and in the Pacific even with with with sea assets. So, all of a sudden a you know, to use um to use General Patton's uh to to paraphrase it a little bit, you know, static fortifications were a testament to the foolishness of of

[12:10] mankind. Because when you have what what came to be called the Blitzkrieg, you just went around it or you went through it. It meant nothing. And it was a completely ineffective way for France to defend herself. And so, um as as maneuver warfare and rapid armor advances and and and became the norm in military engagements, so fixed defenses were bypassed. They were absolutely useless. And so, France's doctrine had become dogma by the you

[12:47] know, early to mid-1930s and and and and as a result, Nazi Germany was able to defeat France quickly um and and and and shockingly actually shockingly fast for the rest of the world. So, we we may be facing militarily a similar situation right now in that uh the United States continues to build aircraft carriers. Now, as someone who spent a lot of his military career in naval aviation, the

[13:24] aircraft carrier is the epitome of the United States Navy. They're huge. They have, you know, dozens of aircraft aboard. The you know, they're they're crewed with between 4 and 5,000 people depending on which which aircraft carrier we're talking about. And and they are just a truly amazing military weapon. However, the aircraft carrier The The same thing was thought about the battleship prior

[13:59] to World War II. And it quickly became obvious that the battleship, the the the the center of the United States Navy from the standpoint of most of the admirals in commanding the Navy, had been passed by by the aircraft carrier. It had been eclipsed by it. There were demonstrations that that showed that the battleship was vulnerable to an air attack despite its massive armament, in some cases 6 9 I think 9 16-in guns, the ability to throw

[14:34] enormous projectiles miles and miles and miles. Still, attacked by a group of dive bombers, the the battleship was sunk. And in fact, this is one of the reasons why America won the war in the Pacific theater during World War II was because we had so many more aircraft carriers than the Japanese did. We just in essence overwhelmed their navy. And they had they had even larger battleships than we had, but still they fell prey to

[15:12] to aerial attack, right? And so is is the aircraft carrier today still the kind of viable weapon that we think it is. So, if we look at what's going on in the Middle East or in South Asia and Iran, so it appears that the aircraft carrier has been a very effective weapon. However, in a day and age where, you know, someone could a country could potentially launch a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand drones at an aircraft carrier. And let's say

[15:48] each drone costs, uh, you know, a hundred thousand dollars. So, um, a hundred of them, we're talking about ten million dollars. If if a few of them get through and sink an aircraft carrier that cost a billion dollars, right? And kills five thousand people or even four thousand people or at least puts them in the water, how viable is that platform any longer? And this is something that naval strategists are looking at today. So,

[16:26] the doctrine of the dominance of the aircraft carrier as a naval weapon is, I think, very much under examination and rightly so. It pains me to say this as, you know, as as what we called in the Navy an Airedale, but it may be the case, right? Maybe having manned aircraft flying off of an aircraft carrier doesn't make sense anymore in a time when we can fly unmanned drones. So, maybe the way we use an aircraft carrier has to change even though

[17:01] perhaps the platform is still viable. Or maybe what we need is a lot of small aircraft carriers. They were called Jeep carriers in World War II, and they did a lot of the work ferrying aircraft from place to place, and they were a lot less expensive than the larger aircraft carriers. So, maybe a bunch of smaller aircraft carriers, more like the um uh the uh transports that the Navy uses for the Marine Corps, maybe those are better because they're smaller, they have they require a much

[17:37] smaller crew, less expensive to build, and you can still launch a lot of of unmanned uh aerial vehicles off of them. So, these are the kinds of issues from a military perspective that need to be examined in order not to have doctrine fall uh fall prey to dogma. So, we have a similar uh situation s- in businesses. So, companies become very attached to successful business models, and legacy processes, and established

[18:13] hierarchies, and familiar metrics. So, all of these, you know, p- people who who run the business, who lead a business, they have they're very comfortable with them, and they they become very reluctant to change them. And success reinforces the belief that this is how we do things. And the example I gave with the Walt Disney Company or with Walt Disney Productions, I think, is uh a good example, albeit one from from a while ago. But, we have businesses doing the same thing. I've talked about IBM in the past. They

[18:48] were the dominant computer maker, not anymore, and how they're really more of a consulting company. So, uh look at any company that used to be very well known that seems to have fallen off the landscape, and almost for sure, at least part of the reason why they've lost their dominance is because their doctrine became dogmatic and they were no longer the dynamic company that allowed them to capture the marketplace the way they formerly had. So,

[19:23] look at uh look at uh breakfast foods, right? I grew up eating cereal every day of my life practically and I still love breakfast cereal, but the reality is as a as a dietary staple, breakfast cereal is just not what it used to be. And and cereal companies or or our breakfast food companies, I should say, have tried remaking it. They've tried all kinds of fancy flavors, but the reality is that people are going back or not going back to, but they're changing

[19:59] to other uh breakfast food preferences, whether it's yogurt or more protein-centered uh breakfasts or or whatever it is or no breakfast at all. I I actually don't eat breakfast anymore. I remember growing up as a kid, we were told breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Turns out that it's not exactly true. It depends if you're going to go be, you know, going out and and and doing heavy manual labor or heavy, you know, physical labor um all day. So, then yeah, you probably need a a big breakfast, but for me who,

[20:36] you know, stands at a desk most of my day, uh you know, a big breakfast, all it does is weigh me down and causes me to gain weight. So, uh businesses fall into the same trap uh that that that the milit- that the military can. And and so, looking at some of the Conman warning signs, so the the there are situations where policies continue to survive without any purpose at all. Well, this is the way we do things. Well, fine, but why are we still doing things this way? The original purpose for doing it that way doesn't

[21:11] exist anymore.

[21:12] >> [snorts]

[21:12] >> There's a resistance to new technology. So, businesses today that are resisting the adoption of uh of of large language models, of automation, they are letting their whatever standard operating procedures or doctrine they have calcify into dogma, and they are going to be left behind. I don't think we should be fooling ourselves into thinking that somehow, you know, AI is going to get uh you know, I don't know, outlawed or something like that. Quite to the

[21:48] contrary, AI is just the next stage of technological development that uh that that businesses are facing, and just like with the fax machine the telephone, the fax machine, uh you know, personal computers, the internet, um this is just going to be the next development, and businesses have to learn and adapt and develop new doctrine, new SOPs, to deal with the new technology, right? And so, um an

[22:23] organization that that does not continue to adapt will fall behind. And and and there's there's like I said, so many uh examples of this that have happened over the years. You know, one would think that nobody would dispute this anymore, and yet you hear talk of it uh I hear talk of it in business podcasts. The the business podcasts to which I listen, um you know, it seems like all Frank all the time, right? And it's it's incredibly foolish. We

[23:00] the progress is going to continue. We can either harness it for our benefit or we can ignore it at our peril. So, um the hidden cost of rigid thinking really is slowed adaptation, which I was just talking about, bureaucratic paralysis, which is another form of the same thing, declining competitiveness, which is where we start to lose ground, and finally cultural stagnation. So, a company that is not engaged in in

[23:37] actively dealing with changes in the marketplace, changes in technology, changes in consumer preferences, changes in global outlook, etc. is is is one that will stagnate culturally because the the people who want to grow both professionally for themselves, but also see the organization for which they're working grow, they're going to leave. They're going to find another place to at which to work where [snorts]

[24:12] where there is that forward-looking uh perspective, right? And so, the people who stay behind are those who are not going to move the business forward. And so, not only is the business going to stagnate, but the whole attitude toward it, the culture of the business, is going to stagnate as well. And And this isn't something that happens overnight. It's something that happens gradually, and oftentimes it's it's not so easy to detect that it's going on.

[24:47] So, what happens is over years and years and years, um a company it it it it performs just kind of okay, um but its performance is dropping a little bit a little bit of and that's what happened with with Walt Disney Productions. It wasn't as if overnight the company lost its ability to be creative. It's just that ability atrophied year by year by year so that, you know, 15 years after Walt Disney had died, the product it was putting out was just not the

[25:23] enormously creative content and and and experiences that that that Walt Disney always pursued when he was alive. Uh and so companies end up mistaking momentum for strength and that's what happened with Walt Disney Productions. And they failed to recognize that the environment had changed and they either needed to change with it or become irrelevant. So, let's take a quick break and we'll come up and come come back and I'll talk about some specific things we can do about this.

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[26:39] or visit magnumprops.com. Okay. So, let's look at five ways of dealing with the problem of doctrine becoming dogmatic from a business standpoint. Okay, so first of all, uh number one, we need to treat processes as tools, not truth. Okay, so s- any system that we institute, it should serve an outcome. We shouldn't systematize purely for the you know,

[27:16] purely for systemization, right? Any system has to have a productive purpose within our business. And so we need to review policies regularly to see if they are still applicable. Now, do we need to do it quarterly, semi-annually, annually? That that's hard to say. That'll depend on on on the business, but I would say at least annually. Any significant policy should be reviewed to see if it's still relevant in the business world today. So

[27:54] change is happening at a much more rapid pace than it used to, and a policy that we put in to this year may no longer be relevant or may need some modification or at least some tweaking for the year to come. And then we need to eliminate procedures that no longer create value. Okay, we shouldn't be doing things purely because it's it's dead, purely because that's how we've been doing it. So for example, for many many years I had the practice of at the end of each

[28:29] work day creating a written calendar for the for the next day, so that I could wake up that day and just you know, get going with with my day and not have to plan things out. And so I did my planning in essence the afternoon night before. And one of the things did is it forced me to really think through what needed to be done. Here's the problem. It took a lot of time to do that in a I I had a small calendar book that I used. It took a lot of time to do that. And often times tasks

[29:05] they were multi-day tasks and so writing them over and over again each day was a complete waste of time. And so I had to get rid of that process in favor of a new process where I kept my calendar electronically. I use Google Calendar. And I kept a to-do list electronically as well. I use Apple Reminders. Those two tools together Now, I didn't come to them immediately. At first I looked at using Evernote which was which is a great

[29:40] tool. But for me it wasn't the right tool in terms of keeping track of of what I needed to do day-by-day. And so what I needed to do was a adopt a new a new SOP if you will for you know, keeping current with how technology was working, right? And so I had I what I ended up doing is I challenged my assumptions behind my workflows. Did I really need to write things down with a pen with I used pens and pencils in

[30:15] order for for me to you know, focus enough on am I doing the most important things for you know, have I have I set my priorities correctly for the next day. It turned out that that I didn't have to do that using paper pen and pencils. As much as I liked doing that and I love beautiful pens and all that. Like if you look at my desk here, I've got here's a beautiful, you know, Lamy um uh, fountain pen that was given to me by my my very long-standing and great friend and brother Dell, right? I love using these kind of pens. Here's a Here's one that's, you know, wood, right? Um, but

[30:51] the fact of the matter is it didn't make sense to use to use the to take the kind of time that I was taking to do that, 30, 40 minutes to do that, right? And so I had to adapt. Uh, and that is it. Processes are a means, not an end. And so we need to treat them as tools not as truth. Okay. Next, we need to reward adaptation, not just compliance. So, when we when we reward compliance, we're rewarding uh, rigidity. And we don't

[31:27] want to reward rigidity rigidity. We want to encourage people to look for new and better ways to do whatever it is that needs to be done. Right? So, we should recognize intelligent experimentation, even if in the end the experiment is not successful. That's perfectly fine because many of the things we try are not going to be good, right? I just gave the example of adapting or or evolving from, you know, pen and paper

[32:02] to electronic. Uh, and and I've tried out several tools before I realized for what I for how I work and and and how for what makes me productive, Apple Reminders and and Google Calendar is the best. And I used I used Apple Calendar and didn't like it. It It It just It wasn't the right tool for me. Um, I also tried um, there's a calendar program in uh, Microsoft. I didn't like that either. Uh, for whatever reason Google Calendar worked best for me. It's the most

[32:39] efficient tool for me to use. But interestingly enough, I tried using Google's reminders and that the reminder system in Google Calendar, it just doesn't have the kind of flexibility and capability that Apple Reminders does. And so that's why I I That's how I ended up with those two tools. But but it took me a process of probably a couple of years working through these different options to find the ones that work best. Now, will these be the ones that work best forever? No, probably not. Something will will almost inevitably come along

[33:16] that's going to be better. And so I I I can't be rigid in this. I need to reward myself for adaptation in the same way I do with other members of my teams. Um and and and so I need to encourage the questioning of what may be outdated practices. And I need to avoid punishing uh deviation. And and quite to the contrary, what I need to do is encourage deviation. If you've got a better way of doing it, do it. Let's talk about it. Maybe it's something more of us need to adopt, right? And so

[33:53] adaptability has to become part of the culture, not just culturally acceptable, but part of the culture at its root. Okay. Next, we need to reevaluate success metrics. So old metrics can drive obsolete behavior. So when we talk about key performance indicators, they need to reflect current realities. Now, uh it may be that you know, our business

[34:28] uh the bottom line of our business is the bottom line, the net income. And as long as net income is positive and growing, so we're we're doing fine. However, it's probably not enough to look just at that bottom line, okay? Because we we need to be looking at other KPIs, such as margin per unit sold, for example. So, uh I know for my business I I I my primary business at in my multi-family office practice. So,

[35:04] I clients either pay what amounts to a fixed monthly fee or an hourly fee. And I'm working with a new client, um he wants he's going he wants to appoint me as the successor trustee of his trust. And you know, he says, "Well, what do you charge?" So, I I told him my fee, and and he said and and and he said, "Well, can we put that in the agreement?" And I said, "Well, here's the problem. You know, God willing, you're going to live another 10 years. I doubt that that's still going to be my hourly rate 10 years from now. So, what we did is we figured out a formula

[35:40] that will allow my hourly rate to increase while at the same time giving him the assurance that, you know, when I become the trustee, I'm not going to just, you know, double my rate or whatever and and and bleed his trust dry, right? And look, we we don't know each other well, so it's it's a legitimate concern on his part, right? He's he wants the assets in his trust to be to go to his beneficiaries. And so, we we, you know, we I need to uh even now evaluate the metrics of my

[36:17] success, right? So, what what makes me financially successful right now is unlikely to be what would make me financially successful 10 years from now and I have to be able to adjust those KPIs in order to make sure that I'm keeping my business current. Okay, so as well I need to you know, we need to update marketing update incentives as the market evolves and we need to avoid optimizing for outdated goals, right? So

[36:52] as we look at whatever it is we're doing. So for my shows for example, I have I have two basic goals for my shows. One is to increase the number of my number of subscribers and two is to increase not so much the time viewed per se but the time viewed per viewer. To me that's more important than just the straight amount of time viewed because I I can buy a lot of time viewed, but if if you know, if the

[37:29] most people are only watching a few minutes of a show, it's not having the impact that I want to have. So how can I optimize my goal of having an my goal is to have an impact on people to help them improve their lives. How do I optimize for that goal, right? As opposed to just what I was doing last year, which is just trying to increase the amount of time that people spend just overall watching my shows, right? So metrics shape organizational behavior and so we need to make sure that our metrics are

[38:04] staying relevant. Okay. Next, we need to create mechanisms for descent. So a healthy organizations, they challenge themselves. Now, they don't tear themselves down. Challenging and dissension or dissenting are different than destruction. So, we don't want to plant the seeds of destruction within our organizations. What we want to do is create appropriate ways for people to disagree so that the organization can

[38:39] learn and continue to grow. So, in in in the military we have what are called like red and blue teams where we're war gaming, we need to do the same thing in our companies. We we need to have some of this sort of you know, war gaming attitude, red team thinking, right? How could we be doing this differently than we're currently doing it? The so-called sort of you know, out of the box thinking, right? And we in particular, and this is something I find the Navy does particularly well. We need to encourage

[39:14] and invite critique from lower levels. I've I've mentioned this I think a number of times. It's especially the case in naval aviation and in the submarine communities where even the most junior person at a squadron or on a boat, that person's ideas are listened to and in in in at least some cases they're adopted because they know their job. And you know, the the the captain of the boat or the commander of the squadron is not going to know as much about what

[39:50] that junior sailor is doing as the junior sailor does. And so, in a small unit where we're talking about maybe 110 to 150 sailors, the input of every sailor is crucial to meeting the mission. And commanding officers know that and so they listen, right? And then finally, we need to prevent leadership from um from being sort of encased in an echo chamber where all they hear back is, "Yeah, good. Great. Yeah, you're

[40:26] wonderful." I'll tell you one of when I went through chaplain school, one of the frankly worst educational experiences of my life because mostly we sat in a classroom while the instructor read to us the verbage of of different uh regulations and policies. I mean, it was horrible, right? So, at the end of chaplain school, the uh the uh

[41:02] uh commanding officer of the chaplain school, actually it was the officer in charge of the of the chaplain school, came in to talk to us to get our thoughts on how chaplain school had gone. And one of my fellow chaplains stood up and praised to the rafters the how good the experience had been. And my jaw dropped practically to the desk. I could not believe it. Now, this one this person had been prior service um

[41:37] in the Marine Corps and that made it even worse because that is not how the Marine Corps teaches Marines to be. And so, and I listened to a couple of other people talk about how great it was, not a word of dissension, and then finally I raised my hand and was recognized. I stood up and you had to stand up, you know, "Chaplain Bemel, uh you know, blah blah blah blah blah," whatever. And I said, "You know, with due respect, sir, uh I thought that this educational experience was subpar. Everybody in this room has a master's degree.

[42:13] The idea that we have to have documents read to us so that we'll understand them is suboptimal at best. We should have been assigned this reading in the evenings and then come to the classroom prepared to discuss them, what they mean, how they're applied, and and and used in a practical setting. There was silence in the room. Like, how dare I dissent? Well, you know what?

[42:52] That's one of the reasons why the Navy Chaplain Corps was so dysfunctional is there was not the room for dissent there. And I I I I realized that very early on and I made a commitment in my career. I don't care if if the you know, if the senior leadership didn't like dissension, I was not going to praise when praise was not warranted. So, I was going to, you know, uh politely speak my mind. And here's the interesting thing.

[43:28] Commanding officers, the commanding officers with whom I worked, they liked that. They wanted to hear that because they wanted to improve. It was only the Chaplain Corps that didn't want that that that didn't want dissension on that level. And that's a shame. But, I also learned something else very valuable. In the end, the Chaplain Corps really could do very little to hold back my career because I was responsible to the commanding officers whom I served. And that was

[44:05] important. And I was responsible to the sailors and Marines and other service members to whom I served. That's what was important. So, we need to bring that same attitude toward our bit to our businesses. We need to encourage dissent and not let leadership exist in an echo chamber. Okay? So, organizations fail faster when disagreements disappear than they do when disagreements are brought out in the open and they're dealt with, they're resolved, and and good change is brought about. Okay. Finally,

[44:40] separate separate identity from method. So, leaders often confuse who we are with how we operate. Who we are is a statement of values. It's a statement of purpose and mission. That's who we are. How we get there is a is a separate issue. Okay? Now, who we are is an organization that behaves ethically. But how what we do within the range of the ethical behaviors has to change.

[45:16] There's nothing unethical about you per se about using a large language models. You say, "Well, wait a minute. It's going to put people out of work." Well, not necessarily. Okay? The way I use large language models in my practice and and with my teammates and encourage my teammates to use it enhances their productivity, which means we will make more money. We as individuals will make more money because we are more productive. Okay? That violates nothing about our values.

[45:52] And I highly highly value people. Okay? What I One of the one of the ways in which I demonstrate that I highly value people is by providing them with opportunities for professional growth. And that is what AI is. It's an opportunity for professional growth. Okay? Now, the fact of the matter is and I think that businesses that issue AI are going to get run over. And and their employees are eventually going to lose their jobs because the companies are not going to be able to compete effectively.

[46:27] So, I that I think we have to keep that in mind that that that sort of putting our heads in the sand when it comes to new technology, in the end, will do far more damage to our businesses than figuring out how to use new technology productively and for the benefit of our teams. And so, we have to separate our identity from our methods. So, we need to preserve our mission while adapting the execution as to how we meet

[47:03] the mission. We need to distinguish between core values and legacy systems. And finally, we need to evolve without abandoning our purpose. Okay? All of that is embedded in and for those of you I I haven't talked about the three pillars of attainment for a while, but that's contained in the three pillars of attainment, right? We we need to understand our purpose, who we are, our mission, what we want to accomplish. Those Those should stay pretty

[47:40] consistent. Now, we may tweak them from time to time as we as we grow, as we change. How we express our purpose, how we meet our mission, those need to change. For us as individuals, for our businesses as well. Otherwise, we are turning doctrine into dogma, right? And so, like so many things in this realm, disciplined leadership is absolutely absolutely essential. When we talk about

[48:17] execution, much of execution happens because leadership is driving it. It is making it happen. We're encouraging our team members. We're incentivizing our team members, okay? So, we need to challenge our own assumptions. We need to avoid emotional attachments to old methods. We need to reward flexibility, and we we need to recognize when systems no longer fit reality. So, this requires intellectual humility and organizational courage,

[48:54] okay? So, some closing thoughts. Doctrine creates order. Dogma creates blindness, okay? The strongest organizations are not those with the most established systems. They're the ones willing to adapt those systems when reality changes. In war and in business, the danger is not having a doctrine. The danger is in refusing to outgrow and to outgrow it and let it change, and thus becomes dogma.

[49:32] So, I thank you very much for joining me today. Uh it is especially those of you who are watching this live, um with the late start. Uh slate of shows, Mondays at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time, Trust and Estates Weekly. Tuesdays, like today, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time, Business Lessons from the Military. Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, People Making Money, and every other Thursday at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, my show Jigger's Displace, where we have a cocktail and a schmooze, and talk about all the things not related to finances. So, lots of

[50:08] opportunities for us to be together during the week. I hope you'll continue to join me. If you have comments, criticisms, questions, just look right down below into the show notes, and you'll see links to my social media and my email address. Feel free to post them. Always love to hear uh see what you have uh see what you have to say. Hear what you have to say, I guess, is better. And if you're not a subscriber, please do consider subscribing. I'm on all three of the major uh podcasting networks, uh YouTube, Spotify, and Apple

[50:43] Podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. So, once again, thank you so much for joining me. Really appreciate it. Wishing you a wonderful rest of the day, and signing off as I always do. Marie darling, you are my bell. Courage at all times, my friends.