This is Jockel Podcast number 239 with Echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

And also joining us tonight is Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening.

So last podcast we went through the Wu Z, which you did some research and we did not come up with the meaning of the word Wu Z, other than Wu.

Okay, so Wu Z by Wu Chi from ancient China, a lot of solid leadership lessons in there. And I was thinking about these leadership principles and how leadership principles are not supposed to change.

That's kind of, you know, I say, oh, you know, leadership principles stay the same.

And when you read through the Wu Z, you start to get some supporting evidence to that because he's talking about the fact that you need to be benevolent and you need to treat people well and treat him with respect and take care of your people, which is all things that, you know, I talk about we all talk about.

But then in the Wu Z, it also says to execute anyone that disobeyed your orders.

So, so that leads you to think, well, maybe some principles have changed. And you know, I used to actually have a rationalization for this or an excuse for this.

And what I would say is there is, there is a difference in leadership when you're leading conscripts instead of volunteers.

And so as leadership moved away from or military leadership, and that went by the way, when you go back in time, it's not just military leadership because what are the people, the people are surfs and peasants and they're being led by these kings with divine power.

So, but as time went by, it's like, okay, so that's why the leadership principle might not really fit. Maybe that's why changes. But then I started thinking about that.

What if you go ahead and actually let those things play out? Right? And actually that question has been answered. Right? That's what history is. And what happens is if you're executing people, if you're not treating people the right way as leaders, what happens? Eventually, what do you get?

You get a revolution, you get people to come after you and take you out of power. And look, just like we talk about, you can get people on board for a little while. Right? If I have, you know, 5,000 soldiers, and they see me execute two people that didn't follow my orders, they're going to follow my orders for a little while.

Right? Maybe for a long time, maybe since that extreme measure, maybe they'll follow my orders for a year, they'll just live in fear. But when that opportunity arrives for them to step up and take that power away from you, they're going to do it.

So what we see, play out. And then the other side, so now we go to the side of, okay, so I'm going to take care of my people. That's what I'm going to do.

But just like we say, that doesn't mean we coddle our people, because if we coddle our people, then they're, they're soft. And they destroy themselves. They, they fall apart.

So, and we see that play out in the world when a, when a society gets too soft, they can no longer survive. So even in ancient times with conscripts and, and peasants and serfs and slaves, if you let things play out, the leadership principles still actually apply.

And, and then I started thinking about tactics, which this is another thing that I used to sort of, I used to, I used to sort of say the same thing about tactics, which is, hey, you know, the principles on the battlefield, they don't change until you go before the machine gun, right?

Or the, at least the gun, right? Because that's, that's where you start to talk about covered move, and that's where it really plays into, plays into how you're going to fight.

But then, if you adjust your perspective a little bit, if we're fighting with spears and we're in a fail-anks, guess what?

I've got my shield, I'm holding my shield up, it protects the left part of my body, and it tech protects the right part of the person to my left.

And I am being protected covered by the person on my right. And what we're going to do is cover for each other as we advance with the fail-anks.

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