When I was running the advanced training in the SEAL teams, I watched and I saw

all too often platoons falling apart during training missions. Just falling apart.

Total disaster. And here's the thing, it wouldn't happen all at once. It wouldn't

happen from one big catastrophic event. It was a little mistake here, followed by a

little mistake there, which leads to another mistake. They would take too long to

come up with their plan. Take them an extra 45 minutes to come up with a plan.

And now they don't really have time to rehearse. And they don't have time to give

fire team leaders the time that they need to brief their teams and do some walkthroughs.

And since they didn't have time for that, they don't have time for walking through or even

talking through some contingencies. And this is before they even get in the field. And then they

get in the field. And so no one has a real clear idea of what's going on. And one team makes a

small adjustment to the plan. And they don't really tell anybody else. And then another team reacts

a little bit differently to the same problem. And they make a small adjustment, but it's in the

other direction. And now these little problems start to compound and things start to unravel.

And then the platoon commander starts to feel like he's losing control. So he overcompensates.

He starts yelling at people and the squad leader doesn't like that. So he gets defiant and he

doesn't listen. And the downward spiral accelerates. And soon it's a lost cause. It's just chaos.

Ma'am. It's just disaster. And all that started because they took a little extra time to plan.

The plan is important. But when you take a little too much time and then you let that bite into

your rehearsal time and the briefing time and you can't do walkthroughs and not everyone gets the

word, it's that one problem leads to the next problem, which leads to the next problem. And the

problems get worse and worse. And then you have an unmitigated disaster. And this is the thing.

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