The Art of Manliness - #121： Strategic and Critical Thinking With Tom Ruby

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so

00:00:19.100 a common theme we write about on the website is big picture strategic thinking how we can become

00:00:26.040 better more critical thinkers so we've done content about the ooda loop psychological biases

00:00:32.860 that get in the way of us making good decisions that help us live a good life anyways today on

00:00:38.560 the show i have a man who has dedicated his career his life to improving strategic thinking and

00:00:45.820 critical thinking in life and death situations his name is tom ruby he served 26 years in active

00:00:50.940 duty positions in the united states air force from squadron intelligence officer to chief of

00:00:55.580 document for the air force intelligence surveillance reconnaissance enterprise he's also the chief

00:00:59.740 of special programs for air force material and he was also on general petraeus's joint strategic

00:01:04.600 assessment team during the afghanistan and iraq wars so this is a man who's dedicated himself to

00:01:10.140 writing documents that have been used in the military developing strategy and how not only

00:01:17.240 officers but soldiers on the ground can think more critically in life and death situations

00:01:21.860 anyways a fascinating fascinating character and today on the show tom and i discuss thinking

00:01:27.500 strategically how we can do it better we discuss how we can think critically and so whether you are

00:01:33.580 a guy working for a corporation or you own your own business knowing how to strategize is something

00:01:39.040 that will get you far in life so we discuss the the topics the subtopics you should focus on in order

00:01:44.740 become a better strategizer and among other things we discuss ender's game and what ender from ender's

00:01:51.140 game can teach us about leadership and strategic thinking anyway fascinating discussion i think

00:01:55.920 you'll like it you get a lot of takeaways really good nuggets there that you can start applying to

00:01:59.480 your life today so without further ado tom ruby on strategic thinking

00:02:03.380 tom ruby welcome to the show hey thanks brett it's really good to be here i'm a i'm a huge fan

00:02:18.860 from your early days all right well thank i really appreciate that so let's uh let's start with your

00:02:24.360 story because it's really interesting so you are right now an expert and consultant on strategic

00:02:29.000 planning and critical thinking but how do you get to this point you actually have a pretty

00:02:33.380 interesting background story can you give us up to date on how you got to where you are now

00:02:38.140 sure um it's odd i've almost it's in some ways i've lived almost a forest gump like life i mean

00:02:46.120 i've been in the right place at the right time not of my own doing necessarily but um providence puts

00:02:51.320 you there and and i think a lot of times it's you know do you make the most of uh your opportunity

00:02:56.560 i was born in belgrade serbia which was then yugoslavia behind the iron curtain my mother's

00:03:02.960 family were royalists who supported the crown and the free war government against the german

00:03:08.000 and tito's communists during world war ii so that set us up as enemies of the state when tito came into

00:03:14.720 power when i was a year old my mom and dad took me and did a no kidding overnight escape out of the

00:03:22.320 country they made their way to paris and then on to los angeles um i work up in a i grew up in a

00:03:30.720 working-class home um where my mom and dad both work now my dad worked two jobs i played football in

00:03:36.720 high school and decided to go to the air force academy after a recruiting visit there um i played

00:03:43.680 football and that was fun but i had a really really tough time with the military side of the experience at

00:03:48.720 first and that was my first real taste of the need to turn um you know to what you espouse is the art

00:03:55.120 of manliness i realized that i was constantly making excuses and i needed to be more disciplined

00:04:01.200 in my my life and my skills and my studies um like you discussed with dr j in the episode on why

00:04:07.840 your 20s are important you become manly by doing manly things um but taking responsibility was a big one

00:04:14.800 for me after i graduated got married um to my my wife i was still married to my friend we went off to

00:04:25.680 our first duty assignment in south carolina and i was an intelligence officer in f-16 wing um i noticed

00:04:31.520 really early on that we were training for combat missions with a methodology that could potentially

00:04:36.320 prove disastrous um everybody at that time was it was about how low can you go how fast and how low can

00:04:42.320 you fly um and it was almost without regard to what the threat was going to be from the other side

00:04:49.600 um trying to explain that to my leadership was difficult because when you've done something for

00:04:55.040 so long it always seems right that makes sense um so when we deployed the desert shield in 1990

00:05:04.560 i really slowly and methodically showed my leadership um why i thought that we needed to make a change from

00:05:11.120 low level tactics to higher altitude to give us a better chance of survivability um we did make that

00:05:17.200 change and a bunch of the other wings that were deployed also did the same thing but it took several

00:05:23.760 months to train to apply the new way and then on the very first night of the war um back in 1991 those

00:05:31.920 guys that flew in low were the first ones that got hit you know by anti-aircraft fire and surface-to-air missiles

00:05:39.680 and really by the next day um everybody had changed our tactics so when i returned from the war the air

00:05:48.080 force sent me to graduate school for the first time um and between a whole series of um you know going

00:05:57.440 back to school and going to operational deployments and back to school and operational deployments i got to

00:06:02.160 um apply some of the concepts i learned about in school or read about from other people and i also

00:06:09.360 got a chance to learn how to really patiently build momentum behind ideas um that's both within your

00:06:15.520 peer group and with your leadership you know to implement new ideas in 1997 i found myself deployed to

00:06:23.200 saudi arabia at the headquarters enforcing the no-fly zone in iraq um our american british and french

00:06:31.920 pilots were coming back every day saying that they were targeted by iraqi surface air missiles south of

00:06:36.560 the no-fly zone line but nobody in dc would believe anything they said they were like oh these are just

00:06:42.400 cowboy pilots you know they're making it all up and i get on the phone and say why would anybody make

00:06:48.080 that stuff and they'd say well because there's nothing there and i say well could you look could

00:06:55.040 you actually look and move some of our intel assets over there to look and they'd say why would we want

00:07:00.400 to waste an asset to look for something that's not there so i mean it was just really circular reasoning

00:07:06.480 and again you know trying to build up some some momentum among peers i i found some really good

00:07:14.960 young people who were able to help and we convinced the intel people one day to move some sensors

00:07:21.280 to to look where we were telling them to look and suddenly all these threats are there that weren't

00:07:27.920 there to them the day before and in their logic oh my gosh they just moved this stuff down the only

00:07:33.920 reason they could be doing this is because they're getting ready to invade and we're telling this stuff

00:07:38.080 has been there for months okay um that was a really powerful lesson for me um you don't have to

00:07:44.800 know everything in the world but for the things that you're responsible for you can't assume anything

00:07:50.560 away um after that i was uh i was selected to go get a phd um and the light bulb really went off for me

00:08:00.400 when i started taking methodology and critical thinking courses that gave me a template for the first time

00:08:06.880 um to you know to to think about um how to apply the things that i was learning to actual you know real

00:08:20.240 world situations of life and death when i came back from getting my phd i was sent to baghdad um to

00:08:27.760 conduct the iraqi campaign progress review i worked with an awesome british colonel and we were just

00:08:34.480 astounded by the lack of preparation um from on everybody's standpoint for this huge international

00:08:41.040 undertaking um strategic planning is not a secret formula brad i mean you can find any number of

00:08:47.920 checklists on the web um that will take any family any business or any government entity through a

00:08:54.000 process to get you where you want to achieve but the u.s military and our allies had gotten really lazy

00:09:01.360 in the prospects about thinking about war um we show over and over again that when we can get into

00:09:07.280 a fight we win the fight and we can win every fight but lose the entire war um because we don't

00:09:13.760 think through the long term um then when i came home from baghdad for the last eight years of my career

00:09:21.120 through three different assignments really i spent a lot of time on the road i mean countless weeks on

00:09:27.760 the road giving seminars on critical thinking strategic planning and leadership development

00:09:32.960 i was asked to be on general petraeus's joint strategic assessment team um which assessed the

00:09:38.560 u.s and allied strengths weaknesses and options in the entire middle east and the central asia region

00:09:47.600 that result um that resulted in a report that general petraeus put on president obama's desk right

00:09:52.080 after his inauguration and it got me thinking about what i wanted to do afterwards um when i retired

00:09:58.000 i mean because couldn't stay in uniform forever but um i knew that i'd have lots of opportunities to

00:10:04.960 get in with one of the big beltway firms after i retired um but my wife and i had really for a long

00:10:10.880 time wanted to get out of the city and move to our farm so something um there was something that a

00:10:18.320 friend told me years before that resonated with me he was a small town newspaper editor and he'd been

00:10:23.600 courted by the new york times for years and he said people in small towns deserve good journalism too

00:10:31.040 and and that that really made an impact with me and i thought you know people people in small towns

00:10:37.520 and small and medium businesses deserve good consulting that's affordable as well

00:10:41.680 um so that's when i started thinking about how to do this and settle settle down into uh you know

00:10:47.680 having a building up a small consultancy that's network with other good thinkers and that's what i do today

00:10:56.640 all right so you basically take the things you learned um the skills and expertise you develop

00:11:03.360 during your military career and help organizations think strategically so let's talk about what is okay

00:11:10.320 maybe we're going down a rabbit hole but what is strategy right like okay what is what's there

00:11:19.120 between like strategy tactics great doctrine how would you define that that's a there's a brilliant

00:11:26.560 question okay um before you can start with strategy is what links the ends that you want to achieve

00:11:34.480 with the means that you have to do it okay so if you if you think in from from priority or from time

00:11:45.920 priority what comes first you should always have a policy i.e what is it that we want to do okay i want to

00:11:52.560 go do this so the what is your policy for your desired end okay strategy is the how strategy is the how you can do it so

00:12:03.680 if you live you know if you live in oklahoma and you want to go to new york city okay your goal is

00:12:10.400 to get to new york city there's a multiple different ways of how you can do that right

00:12:15.920 you can get on an airplane you can drive a car you can take a train you can hitchhike i mean there's

00:12:22.800 lots of different ways to do it in combinations of those things too and then you and and strategy links

00:12:28.160 the means by which you have it if you don't have a ton of money well you can still get there right

00:12:34.560 it might take you a little bit longer if you hitchhike right if you have a lot of money well you can

00:12:40.640 you know charter an airplane um or build yourself a hot air balloon so strategy is the idea of

00:12:48.800 connecting the what you want to do with the means that you have at your disposal to best figure out

00:12:58.320 the way to do it so you know i'm always thinking trying to become a better strategist um and so are

00:13:06.800 there particular subtopics that individuals should study or research and read about so that they become

00:13:14.560 better strategist yeah i mean i think the best thing that you can do to be a a strategist is to

00:13:24.240 is to make yourself a critical thinker and and really to do that you have to you have to think

00:13:30.240 really really broadly so not just one subject not just be an expert in one thing but try to learn as

00:13:37.440 much as you can about as many different things and i mean you do this on your site if you look at the

00:13:42.560 manly skills right on our manners first you got pages and pages and pages of these things

00:13:48.320 and once you get good at one of these things it's going to help you get good at others okay and so

00:13:55.600 first of all to be a good strategist um you have to be able to think broadly beyond just you know one

00:14:05.040 little thing at one time okay so i recommend that people pick up all kinds of books okay not just history

00:14:12.160 books because you get a lot of guys that'll say well you know knowing really manly books or biographies

00:14:17.760 and history and i think that those are very man okay but biographies and histories can tell you what

00:14:24.240 happened to a person or at an event in a given time given a certain context but if the context today

00:14:33.040 is different then the variables today are going to be different than they were back then

00:14:38.640 and you know if you follow the same you know the same steps that somebody did in another in another

00:14:45.200 case that was different from yours you're going to come up with a different um result so you know

00:14:51.360 i really recommend to people to to read fiction um to read novels to read histories to read biographies

00:15:02.160 um to read books uh outside of your comfort zone and you know i recommend to my own clients to spend

00:15:09.200 an hour a day during your during your job during your duty day to read um and go look at something

00:15:15.120 outside of what you do okay um there's a great harvard business review article in from 2009 on the

00:15:22.560 innovators dna it's called the innovators dna and they talk about the top ceos are those guys that

00:15:29.440 they go around and look at not just their businesses and their segment of industry

00:15:34.320 but other segments of industry or or other industries all together i have a client now

00:15:41.760 that it was just saying that he goes out and he looks at how fruits are arranged at hotels and wonders

00:15:49.360 about how he can make his business you know how he can take that lesson and apply it to his own business

00:15:55.760 that's what makes a good strategy okay it's continually pushing the boundaries of the possible

00:16:02.080 okay not just you know when you see people in tests right that are given you know that are given like

00:16:10.560 a rope and a nail what can you do with this and it's the children that always come up with the

00:16:17.920 the most the most outrageous ideas that are really cool right because people have they haven't grown

00:16:25.680 up enough where people tell them that's dumb or you shouldn't do that right and and i think that

00:16:31.440 if you constantly challenge yourself to see the world in new ways that's going to help you be the

00:16:36.000 best strategy for out so this sounds uh very somewhat similar to like john boyd's thinking with the

00:16:44.880 oodle loop amen where you uh the idea you know you you know in order to become a better strategist

00:16:50.800 and in order to succeed at the oodle loop you need to develop as many mental models as possible

00:16:56.640 from a wide variety of fields what's amazing with his oodle loop like he's he brought in just to develop

00:17:02.000 that he brought in several different mental models from from thermodynamics to cybernetics to

00:17:09.680 quantum physics just to develop that idea but it but by cross-pollinating all those different

00:17:15.520 theorems and ideas from science he's able to come up with this very simple mental model for

00:17:21.920 success in the battlefield and success in any type of conflict you know brett you're absolutely

00:17:27.120 right um to piggyback on what you're just talking about john boyd um scott page okay p-a-g-e from

00:17:36.160 university of michigan published a book in i think it was 2010 it might have been 2009 called the

00:17:42.960 difference and it was it was a look at at how expertise is almost in every case trumped by diversity

00:17:54.880 and you know james surowicki in his book the wisdom of crowds kind of wrote about that and a lot of people

00:18:01.680 poo-pooed that but what paige does is he goes and and says you can find any expert in any field and

00:18:09.360 ask him a question and almost invariably if you ask you know a random group of people who know nothing

00:18:16.560 about or that are not experts in that field the same question and take the mean answer it's always

00:18:22.800 going to be more accurate than the uh than the experts um and and that's what made void that's

00:18:31.600 what made void so brilliant but it's also what made void so threatening um you know to his own leadership

00:18:39.760 okay leadership in almost any business and especially in the military are threatened by guys

00:18:46.560 um you know people that that try to bring in ideas that are outside of the experience of that

00:18:54.320 organization so you were saying you've written an article how the military is anti-intellectual

00:19:01.840 and is this what you mean by being anti-intellectual they're just they're not open to new ideas

00:19:07.520 um in a sense yes i mean the article was the original title of the article was

00:19:13.200 the impact of anti-intellectualism and u.s military but you know it got it got changed when

00:19:20.240 it was published in the american interest but the real point there is that anti-intellectuals

00:19:26.240 are not dumb okay they're actually really intelligent people but they value experience and doing

00:19:34.400 over thinking okay uh richard hofstetter wrote a pulitzer prize-winning book called anti-intellectualism

00:19:40.400 in american life in 1969 um and you know one of the art of manliness's favorites teddy roosevelt

00:19:48.480 um he played a significant role albeit not purposefully in the anti-intellectual movement

00:19:55.840 okay teddy roosevelt was a fierce intellectual right but he was also a doer okay and when he wrote when he

00:20:02.800 wrote his famous poem the man in the arena right that still resonates today and what you'll get is you'll get

00:20:09.200 people that are just doers and they don't think they can't take anybody asking them how do you know

00:20:16.240 that's going to work okay they'll say hey man i'm the guy in the arena i've been there okay i'll give you

00:20:24.000 an example um when i was in baghdad we were going to go quote do fallujah unquote but for the fourth time

00:20:33.760 okay okay and the colonel that was doing the planning for the uh for the operation i went over

00:20:41.200 and i just asked him is this if we do this again tomorrow is it going to necessarily and deliberately

00:20:48.240 lead us to the attainment of our objective and he said that's the problem with you pointy-headed

00:20:52.720 pointy-headed ivory tower academic type you know nothing about war okay and i mean first it's really

00:20:59.040 condescending but second it also shows a lack of willingness to consider that even the possibility

00:21:05.600 that there might be a better way or that you might be wrong um mike warden wrote a book called

00:21:13.360 rise of the fighter generals and he makes a brilliant case that when the strategic air command

00:21:20.000 was at its ascendancy not only within the air force but within the department of defense i mean

00:21:24.960 you know curtis lemay was the chairman of the joint chief of staff and we had sac generals that were

00:21:29.680 in all the key positions they got so they became ossified in his in mike warden's words you know

00:21:37.360 um like petrified wood because they were so fixated on training and sitting alert that they didn't think

00:21:44.240 and they didn't think outside you know their own day-to-day activities and while they were

00:21:49.440 just sitting alert and training the bomber guys or sorry the fighter guys were sending their best

00:21:57.680 officers to schools and sending them to career broadening assignments and sending them overseas

00:22:04.080 to exchanges and almost overnight without even realizing it the bomber generals found themselves on

00:22:11.920 the out and out and then the fighter generals were in ascendancy and yet today those same fighter

00:22:17.280 generals have ossified at least as much if not more so than um than the bomber guys did um from that

00:22:25.920 town from that time and and boyd is a great example john boyd isn't even discussed or mentioned among

00:22:31.280 the air force leadership um today when i wrote that article on anti-intellectualism and it was published

00:22:37.920 back in 2009 um a couple of colonels on the at the pentagon said dude this is going to end your career

00:22:44.960 career and and i said if i'm right in what i wrote then the senior leadership either won't even know

00:22:52.080 that the article exists or if they do stumble upon it they won't do anything um i ended up getting a lot

00:23:00.000 of feedback from people in other branches of government and in industry but not a single word from anybody in

00:23:06.240 senior leadership so as far as outside the military i think hofstetter's um hofstetter's still right

00:23:14.800 anti-intellectualism is still strong again he doesn't say that anti-intellectuals aren't smart but they

00:23:21.760 just value doing what we're thinking and what you see today is the best company the most successful

00:23:29.760 companies out there are the ones that meld the two together okay that that that find the practitioner

00:23:37.200 scholar okay that finds the person that can think and do at the same time they can constantly say how

00:23:43.360 can i do this better that is a it's an outstanding practitioner but is also aware of what's the latest

00:23:51.200 thing out there that i can use so i think there is a tendency for any any individuals organizations to

00:23:58.880 you get comfortable right something's worked before yep and you say you keep doing it and then you run

00:24:04.800 it up to a problem and the typical response for organizations or for people even is that well the

00:24:10.800 problem is i just need to do more of what i have been doing and that will fix things yeah harder better

00:24:16.800 longer harder better longer right work longer and we need to be better but at some point you have to

00:24:22.960 ask yourself how will i know i mean what are what are my criteria going to be to know that this doesn't

00:24:31.280 work okay so when people say to me we just need to work harder we need to work better and we need to

00:24:36.800 work longer i say okay at what point are you going to know whether or not that works and i mean it's not

00:24:43.920 a it's not a challenge it's a serious question when will you know if that worked or not

00:24:51.600 so you know i think one of the things that you should always think about in critical thinking

00:24:56.080 this comes from alec fisher's book the logic of real argument really really good book that you know

00:25:02.160 there's a few books that i that i always gave my my direct subordinates that worked for me and this

00:25:07.760 was one of them um the logic of real arguments and he he starts off by saying it's amazing what

00:25:15.520 you can figure out about a subject just by thinking about it and you think yourself well duh but really

00:25:22.880 there's some there's some profoundness there when he says ask yourself some basic questions um if that's

00:25:30.400 true what should i expect to see so that's one of the questions that i always challenge my you know my

00:25:35.840 mentors and my clients with when they say well this is going to happen and i'll and i'll say okay

00:25:42.320 if that's true what should we expect to see okay and how long are you going to give it to see that

00:25:48.800 um another question is what would i have to know or accept in order to believe that to be true

00:25:56.800 all right what would i have to know or accept in order to believe that to be true

00:26:00.400 and another simple question is how do i know okay um we a very very critical part of planning okay

00:26:10.480 strategic planning and critical thinking is listing all of your assumptions

00:26:18.640 okay we go through life right i'm really deep right we go through life assuming that certain

00:26:25.040 things are going to happen and um at some at some level to get anywhere you have to like for example

00:26:33.120 if you're going to make your trip from oklahoma to new york city and you're going to drive it's a

00:26:38.080 reasonable assumption that you're going to have find open gas stations along the way right um but there

00:26:44.640 may be lots of other assumptions um that you make without even thinking about it and so one of them would

00:26:51.520 be that lots of people make is they get in the car and they don't realize that they've made an

00:26:56.720 assumption that they're not going to get a flat tire the whole way there right yeah and when they

00:27:01.840 get a flat they open up their trunk and they got a spare okay and they've got the jack but they don't

00:27:08.480 have that little mechanism that hooks into the jack to spin around right and so and you say well i didn't

00:27:15.840 know that well that's because you you made an assumption that you wouldn't need it all right

00:27:21.840 and it's it's really it's a very difficult step in the strategic planning process and maybe the most

00:27:28.640 critical of all the steps in the strategic planning process to sit yourself down for your leadership

00:27:35.040 team whoever it is that's going to be doing your plan with you and to no kidding list out all of the

00:27:42.560 assumptions that you're that you're making okay for the for whatever the foreseeable time frame is that

00:27:48.080 you're working and then you aggressively challenge those assumptions and then try to validate them

00:27:55.600 okay so if somebody wants to open a restaurant right i was helping somebody that opened a restaurant

00:28:02.560 and they couldn't understand why their restaurant was empty on a wednesday night

00:28:07.200 okay well we said in the south people go to church on wednesday night they said well who goes to church

00:28:14.640 on wednesday night so we say well you see here's here you are you're you're opening a business with a

00:28:21.600 fundamental assumption that that hasn't been validated and those are just simple ones but

00:28:29.680 here's another one if you're going to open your restaurant okay if you're going to have a specialty

00:28:32.880 type restaurant that serves a certain type of specialty food you need to know that your supplier is going

00:28:38.880 to be able to deliver it to you all the days that you need it right yeah and so we go through life

00:28:46.720 whether it's in a family or whether it's in a small business or whether it's in a county government or

00:28:51.840 whether it's a large military um starting operations without having sat without having actually listed and

00:29:02.400 challenged and validated your assumption i really love that idea and i can see that being very helpful on a

00:29:08.000 just like on the individual level so i think a lot of people have their goals frustrated

00:29:14.320 because they don't even they don't stop to think about those assumptions and question those assumptions

00:29:19.120 that they have that you know because they don't think about well i got this goal to

00:29:23.920 i don't know get this job at x place and then they don't think about well there's going to be lots

00:29:31.360 of other people competing for it um maybe there's something will happen with the business that they

00:29:35.920 won't allow me to get that job you know they have to they have to take back on or roll back on uh

00:29:41.680 hiring for example so yeah i like that idea before you even something as simple as you know if you

00:29:48.800 want to build a tree house right um you can save yourself 10 trips below by sitting down and writing

00:29:56.560 out the things that you need yeah you know um or yeah no i got plenty of that in the garage i got plenty

00:30:02.640 of those nails i do that all the time you know i got plenty of those screws well think about this it's

00:30:08.000 it's not unmanly okay it is not unmanly to go check to see if you actually have the screws that you

00:30:14.640 think you do okay in fact i would say that it's far manlier to go to go check yourself and make one trip

00:30:22.960 instead of having to make a whole bunch of trips you know because you say well crap i really thought i

00:30:27.760 had i really thought i had what i needed yeah i i do that all the time whenever i have a project

00:30:35.280 around the house end up making like five trips to home depot one thing that i've helped too so

00:30:39.600 besides checking first is also when you're at home depot whenever you're there buy more than you think

00:30:45.520 you're gonna need amen that's right right because you're gonna need them next time exactly or even if

00:30:50.960 it's not a next time like you know assume that you're gonna mess up the first time and you're gonna need

00:30:55.920 that extra material so that's my bit of life advice there for you guys you're gonna do stuff

00:31:00.320 around your house buy extra completely agree with you and i did my tree house with my with my kids a

00:31:05.200 couple years ago it was great to have a whole pouch of extra screws with me you know 16 feet up in the

00:31:13.280 trees because you can't get mad at the kids when they drop a screw yeah you know they're just trying

00:31:20.720 to help more so here's the here's the question i have so you were talking about we were talking

00:31:24.640 about john boyd and uh and you um getting that feedback saying that your career is going to be

00:31:30.400 over for this article you wrote uh and and john boyd had that you know same sort of problem like he

00:31:36.880 didn't get he didn't advance past lieutenant colonel i believe um in his career he should have been a

00:31:42.400 general i think but that didn't happen for him he was a colonel right so here's a question i have so

00:31:48.880 how do you balance right so you know boyd said that you can either be someone or do something in

00:31:54.240 life that's brilliant and to be someone you in in the military or any organization you sort of have

00:31:59.920 to be a yes man sort of go with the flow don't rock the boat but if you want to do something you have

00:32:05.200 to um you know but you know piss people off for lack of a better word and you're gonna hurt your career

00:32:13.600 it's so funny that you say that you know but you were gonna say buck the system weren't you yeah

00:32:18.240 i was gonna say buck the system but you know you you it seems that you just piss people off you

00:32:21.520 irritate them so so how do you balance that i mean so there's there's a part of me where i'm like yeah

00:32:25.760 i'm gonna like you know stick to the man i want to do something but at the same time you're like well

00:32:29.600 i got a family right um if i lose my job or if my career doesn't advance like that's not gonna just hurt

00:32:35.920 me it's gonna hurt you know my kids who have nothing to do with this so how do you i mean what's your

00:32:42.560 insight how do you how do you balance that well i gotta support my family so i kind of have to go

00:32:47.760 along but at the same time we'll actually want to do something um right i think that's a brilliant

00:32:53.520 brilliant question um and it's a it's a it's a genuine and legitimate concern that people have

00:33:00.400 and it's a really legitimate concern but i will tell you that it starts with a mindset okay and that

00:33:06.880 mindset is not that you either buck the system or go along okay on the day of my promotion to colonel

00:33:16.080 my my absolutely loving wife who's who's really quiet and normally shy told somebody see he bucked

00:33:25.840 the system and still got promoted and i and i really gently asked her not to say that again because i

00:33:32.400 didn't buck the system i looked for an alternative path within the system and so that's the mindset

00:33:39.840 that that i took is instead of fighting the system look to see if there's an alternative path within it

00:33:46.800 okay um there there's a respectful way that we can say to our bosses and our peers that we can do better

00:33:56.400 instead of saying hey we stink right you can advance in your career by going along as time

00:34:02.880 honored right the japanese culture the japanese corporate culture in which the salaryman says

00:34:08.080 man when i'm going to be a manager i'm going to change things but when he to get there he has to

00:34:12.000 be so completely co-opted by the system that he can't make the changes that that he wanted to make

00:34:18.240 um so how do you make that change first you have to understand that any meaningful change is going to

00:34:24.720 be slow change okay you've heard i know that you've read countless articles about disruptive change

00:34:32.160 right yeah people always say yeah we need disruptive change actually disruptive change is not really

00:34:37.520 helpful okay disruption um really disrupts people's lives it disrupts your operations okay and that

00:34:46.400 disruption often fails because people can't cope with the pace of the change so if it's really important

00:34:54.400 if it's worth doing then it's worth doing slowly okay and by building up a snowball so that's what i

00:35:01.840 always found um the best way to do things i'd start by making sure that my ideas are going to work

00:35:07.440 okay i patiently you know i try to patiently pitch my ideas to colleagues that i would really trust to tell

00:35:15.360 me you know to wave the bs flag if if they needed to or to say hey man i think that can really work

00:35:22.720 okay you listen to their input then you go to your boss okay one of my maxims is that they can't say

00:35:29.760 no if you don't ask i tell all my clients and i tell all my mentorees that you'd be amazed at what

00:35:35.840 your bosses will let you do if you just ask them okay and if you think about this from a sociology

00:35:41.840 standpoint it makes sense because the boss will get the credit if it works and he won't take the blame

00:35:46.640 if it doesn't yeah right so always look to make things better wherever you are um be ready to show

00:35:53.280 you be ready to show your supportive reasoning okay now i've had guys say i think we should do this

00:35:58.480 and i feel why do you think that's going to work and they say why do i have to give you evidence man

00:36:02.400 why can't i just tell you what i think and the answer is well really because nobody gives a crap

00:36:07.360 what you think if you can't show any evidence right so your gut feel there's never going to be

00:36:13.600 sufficient reasoning but when you can come to your boss with with a good idea and some evidence

00:36:19.520 you'll be really surprised at how often um that one change will lead to a cascade of changes that

00:36:26.000 will make the company a new place and it'll give you opportunities to rise so play the long game

00:36:32.640 is absolutely i mean if you're you know now listen you can't play the long game if if and there's

00:36:39.280 nothing wrong with this if you're if you're hopping from job to job to job okay you can't play the long

00:36:44.800 game for any of the companies you can play the long game for yourself okay but you're never going to

00:36:50.080 make meaningful change in in those companies gotcha so you wrote an interesting article i thought was

00:36:57.600 fascinating it was about enders game right and like you i was late to the game on this book because like

00:37:07.040 i always thought it was a book i didn't read it when i was a kid it's sort of a book geared towards

00:37:10.320 young adults and yeah i just never read it but i finally got around to it and it's an awesome book

00:37:17.680 if you haven't read enders game yet read it but you wrote an article that ender can actually teach

00:37:23.200 us a lot about strategic planning leadership and within large organizations so what can ender teach us

00:37:30.960 about being better strategists and better leaders yeah listen like you i was a really late comer at

00:37:37.840 enders game i had you know from the time i was in my early 20s i had people recommending to me to

00:37:45.200 read enders game and then when i was in in grad school getting my phd a professor says to me you've

00:37:53.200 never read enders game at that point i said all right this is dumb i went i bought the paperback

00:37:59.520 and it was like a gut punch i mean it was a total gut punch what an idiot i was for not having read

00:38:06.000 this book and um then i had an opportunity to meet orson scott carr when he came to lexington on a book

00:38:15.440 tour and i you know i stood in line with everybody else and and uh i just thanked him for for what he

00:38:22.000 said and he looks up and he says yeah you don't look like everybody else in this line and i said oh and

00:38:27.280 he asked me what i did and i told him what i was doing and that led to a long correspondence and

00:38:32.080 a really close friendship and i brought him to the to the staff college when i was a vice dean of the

00:38:36.960 air command staff college to speak a couple of times and he asked me to write a chapter on ender on

00:38:42.960 leadership for his book enders world and i really think that you know people lose the people lose

00:38:50.880 side of a really important factor this book is that scott carr didn't set out to write a book about

00:38:55.520 science fiction of the future he set out to write a book about sociology and moral situations and

00:39:02.240 dilemmas you know and how to face those and and that's where i think that the real leadership and

00:39:07.200 manhood skills come in okay um the first the first lesson from ender's game is that skill and

00:39:14.560 excellence are a means to advancement and a threat to your peers and your bosses um so if you're really

00:39:21.600 good at what you do let your work speak for itself okay be humble second um if what you're doing doesn't

00:39:30.800 work well at some point you have to consider that doing it again and again and again also won't work

00:39:35.840 well find another way think through alternatives look for those people around you that have good

00:39:43.040 ideas and then lift them up by empowering them to try their own ideas and practice this is exactly how

00:39:48.880 ender built his team he was given the dregs that nobody else wanted right and what did he do with them

00:39:55.040 he found what each one of those you know kids was best at and used them for that at the right time

00:40:02.960 all right he realized that everyone had different capabilities but he made the most of every person's

00:40:10.400 best and put them where they were needed most when they were needed then ender does something else that's

00:40:16.480 really hard for all of us i mean i think this is one of the most important things that we can get out

00:40:21.040 of strategic planning and critical thinking ender accepts the world as it is not how he'd like it to be

00:40:27.440 right so many people get hung up on obstacles and they complain about something that complains

00:40:36.080 don't want to do anything about and then they start banging on their steering wheel right what's

00:40:41.360 the only thing that's going to fix the flat you getting out and fixing the flat right um and then

00:40:46.000 again i mentioned above being humble um andrew was never too proud to ask for help and he made it and to

00:40:54.000 make others better the best leaders in any field of industry aren't measured by what they do they're

00:41:00.560 measured by i think okay how many of their own former subordinates are promoted or hired away to other

00:41:06.240 leadership jobs okay that was ender okay they took every one of his kids and made them commander that's

00:41:14.560 awesome and and i think that you know i i try to tell my clients i try to call my mentorees

00:41:20.080 you've really made it if your people get hired away from you hmm it's a good thought i actually

00:41:27.520 i had a when i before i did the whole art of balancing full-time had a boss uh who was like

00:41:34.480 that i decided to um i told him you know i'm gonna do this thing full-time i have to quit i felt really

00:41:40.720 bad leaving because he was a good guy and he's like no that's awesome do it i think that's fantastic and

00:41:46.880 um yeah there's like no grudges he was like he was happy for me and i thought that was that to me

00:41:52.080 that was like a sign of like a good manager amen so um here's a question i have and you know you

00:41:59.520 talk about critical thinking but are there biases that you see over and over again that cause the

00:42:07.680 most problems for leaders and organizations yeah there sure are and i think uh you know

00:42:16.400 steve leavitt and steve dubbs are freaking out they'll tell you that have you ever heard them say

00:42:23.680 what the three hardest words in the english language are it's i don't know i don't know yeah yeah and

00:42:28.720 i found this to be spot on the greatest mistake that senior leaders can make is lacking the humility

00:42:35.120 to consider that there's something that they're not doing right or to admit that there's something

00:42:39.440 that they don't know you know you were talking a little while ago about organizations that have

00:42:43.920 been doing things the same way for a long time they expect that tomorrow is going to look just like

00:42:49.760 today right well the sun's risen the last you know eight days it's going to raise rise again tomorrow

00:42:55.120 that's pretty good not invented here is a huge bias that hurts organization on the other hand the most

00:43:03.280 successful organizations and leaders are those who make it part of their culture for people to

00:43:08.560 interact outside their own specialty okay so if you're a you know if you know it doesn't really

00:43:17.600 matter if you're if you're a lawyer and you can talk about the heisenberg uncertainty principle

00:43:21.920 somehow or another that's going to make you a better lawyer okay um if you can talk about um the

00:43:28.880 sociology of um power distance indices okay and you know who's going to talk to you and give you bad

00:43:36.400 news and who won't um when you really need to hear it just stepping outside of your bounds and being

00:43:44.080 willing to say i don't know help me um i think that's the that's the most important bias that any

00:43:51.920 leader needs to get over i think it's an important one because one thing i noticed too with people who

00:43:57.520 succeed in one area and they become a leader uh they have a tendency and i think other people have

00:44:04.480 this tendency too to see them as experts in a wide variety of topics right so like a doc a lot of people

00:44:12.160 do this like okay well you're you're successful in x business so i'm going to ask you for advice

00:44:19.520 about my business that's completely different um and the guy thinking he's he's flattered because well

00:44:25.840 this guy asked me and he'll give an answer but it he doesn't know anything about that business so he

00:44:31.120 can't really give good advice you know i've i've had uh i've had people ask me well you know how come you

00:44:39.520 don't do pardon finance and marketing and it um you know consulting shouldn't i mean you're a consultant

00:44:51.920 shouldn't you be doing that and i said well i gotta limit myself to something that i'm really

00:44:57.680 confident at okay what i would really really hate to do is to tell you yeah i'll help you with your

00:45:04.400 finance stuff and then not succeed and then have you and then have you tell you know your peers don't go

00:45:11.680 to that guy i would rather undersell and over deliver yeah okay or under promise and over deliver

00:45:18.480 um now on the other hand i'm going to continue to try to get you know wiser and wiser on those things

00:45:27.040 that i don't know about and if somebody asks me hey can you help me with this and i can't do it

00:45:33.360 well i'll get somebody within my own network who can help me so um you have this great list of maxims

00:45:41.520 maxims you have on your website i love maxims big fan of like baltazar gration and other guys who

00:45:49.520 just wrote aphorisms i think uh i love the idea of packing in as much wisdom as you can into a short

00:45:54.960 amount of words so how did you develop this list of maxims and can you share a few with us sure sure

00:46:04.320 well um i was uh i was a professor at the air command staff college which is a the air force's

00:46:11.760 graduate school that they send the top majors to every year for a year sit and seminar and while i was

00:46:19.680 there um you know teaching i was also going off and giving seminars um at other universities at the

00:46:28.320 nato school to you know at foreign at foreign defense colleges as well and everywhere i went

00:46:36.240 people would start asking me hey you mentioned these books and you mentioned these sayings on

00:46:41.120 the board and we have a list of them and i realized you know i really need to put these on paper so i

00:46:47.520 came up with a list of maxims and some of them are you know goodness breeds goodness

00:46:53.360 yes seek balance in life truth doesn't change based on the rank of the recipient

00:47:01.920 if you have to eat a frog staring at it won't make it go down any easier

00:47:07.440 iron sharpens iron and bloom where you're planted and so almost every one of these comes from

00:47:16.000 real life experiences you know or multiple real life experience

00:47:19.520 i love the one uh bloom where you're planted because i think especially for young people

00:47:26.320 because i think a lot of young people this idea that in order to succeed in life or to really get

00:47:31.120 something out of life they have to go somewhere else right they got to go to the big city they got

00:47:37.360 to leave their state um but i really think there's a virtue in deciding you know i'm going to stick where

00:47:42.720 i'm at and see what i can do here that's what i've done like i mean i live in tulsa oklahoma still

00:47:49.040 a lot of people ask me why don't you move to san francisco new york city or there's sort of like

00:47:53.840 there's more more connections it's like you know i like i like doing what i'm doing where i'm here

00:48:02.240 you know brett i think that's that's brilliant but those words came from a really good friend of

00:48:05.920 mine scott temple um used to be a general and now he's a consultant himself and we we used to

00:48:12.160 we used to speak together um quite a bit we would go do a tag team on leadership and leadership

00:48:20.400 development um occasionally and we would get the we would get the young kids that really had stars in

00:48:27.280 their eyes okay i really want to get ahead fast what's my what is my quickest route to senior leadership

00:48:36.000 and we would tell them to bloom where you're planting that you get promoted

00:48:40.880 in any business in any segment of industry by doing what your boss tells you to do okay

00:48:48.640 um not by fighting okay and so like i said you don't have to be you don't have to always be the

00:48:55.120 yes man okay you could do what your boss wants you to do by telling him that there's a better way to do it

00:49:02.080 okay but that's how you bloom where you're planted and a lot of people say well i don't like that

00:49:07.440 job you know that's a that's a crap job you know that's beneath me but you know what sometimes bosses

00:49:14.880 just want to see if you have the humility to do that job they know that you're you know they know

00:49:21.120 that you're um capable there's a great movie that uh 1964 movie called the cardinal um uh you know

00:49:30.480 produced by otto preminger with uh john houston was a academy award nominee and tom tryon was a was a

00:49:37.600 young priest who rose to be a cardinal but he was he was really good and he knew that he was smart and

00:49:45.040 then early on he asked his bishop you know for a really good post and the bishop sent him out to

00:49:53.040 the hinterlands to work for in a small community that wasn't even a village you know and it was

00:49:58.560 essentially to say could you be humble um and he did he bloomed or he was planted and any any rose and

00:50:05.840 that's just a it's a great story and it's a great analogy for for getting ahead today in the world

00:50:12.320 fantastic well tom this has been a fantastic really fascinating discussion um we've you've

00:50:17.440 referenced a lot of books your maxims of course where can people find more about your work and

00:50:22.560 like the books you recommend for becoming better strategists thanks brett um they can go to my

00:50:28.800 website i have a uh they can go to critical thinking solutions.com or bgcs.com that stands for

00:50:37.920 bluegrass critical thinking solutions um they can look me up on facebook google my name tom broody and

00:50:49.600 critical thinking um and it'll come up with the with the website and on the website they can uh you can

00:50:55.440 read my maxims you can read you can look at my reading list it's available for everybody um articles

00:51:01.520 that i've written and um ones that i uh that i you know that i recommend other people read um

00:51:09.840 i just i hope everybody uh you know can be intrigued enough to find one book off that reading list they

00:51:17.200 haven't seen um and and go read it awesome what's a good list i've checked it i love a good reading list

00:51:24.800 and uh got a few in my queue now because of it thanks brett all right well tom ruby thanks so much for

00:51:29.440 your time it's been a pleasure it's been a pleasure talking to you brett thanks our guest today was tom

00:51:34.240 ruby he is the owner of bluegrass critical thinking solutions and you can find out more information

00:51:39.280 about tom and his work at bgcts.com again that's bgcts.com check it out lots of great free content

00:51:49.440 out there you can read and peruse and uh add to your strategic repertoire

00:51:53.680 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:52:01.440 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you like

00:52:05.600 this podcast and you're getting something out of it i'd really appreciate it if you go to itunes or

00:52:09.200 stitcher or whatever it is use or listen to the podcast and give us a review that will really help

00:52:13.440 us out and your feedback will help us out as well until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay

00:52:18.480 manly

The Art of Manliness - July 02, 2015

#121： Strategic and Critical Thinking With Tom Ruby

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