Secrets of the SEALs
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I have always been searching for the processes, tools and frameworks that SEALs use to carry out their missions and day-to-day activities. I have always assumed they keep these in a safe somewhere under lock and key. You just never hear about them.
Many SEALs have written books on entering the SEAL teams (BUDs). Others on past missions. And some have turned to writing fiction with excellent results. One on using SEAL principles in terms of fatherhood and parenting. And finally, there are several leadership books.
But for the hours I have spent reading and studying these books, I have struggled with actually being able to pull out these secrets in ways that I can use them, until now. Thus, I have had to do my own deep dive into this world.
The SEALs Way:
SEALs have been working and succeeding in asynchronous and asymmetrical environments since their founding. This is the reason for their existence. What happens in warfare many times resembles the competitive business world and everyday life. This is where many of us are today: living and working in asynchronous and asymmetrical environments. And if we do not leverage the same skills and mindsets of these warriors, we may fail to remain relevant and competitive.
My Journey:
This effort took me in many directions. SEALs themselves can be unaware of these processes as they have been trained to embody them. That may be why you do not hear about them.
Over time, I have gotten to know a few SEALs and other operators. This has included Eric Davis. Working with Eric, I realized he had a special set of experience, and we both recognized the value of approaching this performance element from two unique perspectives--he as a former SEAL and me as a senior business executive. That partnership helped me extract the secrets you find here. And that is what we will do here, offer two unique perspectives to deliver what you need.
Before diving into the secrets, we need a little perspective.
Coronado:
CORONADO BEACH, CA
Let's start at the gate of Coronado where “training” begins. In that line are a bunch of average men. These are not knuckle draggers (well, maybe a few). It is a mix of high, average, and some even with low ability in terms of intellectual and / or physical skills. Yet, they must learn a multitude of knowledge and skills to execute missions. These skills range far and wide.
They include:
Small boat seamanship and hydrographic surveys and charts
SCUBA skills, including open-and-closed circuit combat diving and how to complete long-distance underwater transit dives
Land navigation, small-unit tactics, rappelling, military land and underwater explosives, and weapons training
Basic parachute training
Diving medicine and medical skills training
Foreign language training
SEAL tactical communications training
Sniper training
Military freefall parachuting
Explosives
And much more
Individually, these are highly technical and complex. Combined, they are an apex of achievement. It is the need to master all of this that drives the ability to master training.
But these men do not differ from you and me. Just a group of average people. So the question is, how do you take a group of average people and turn them into highly skilled and knowledgeable operators. This is the question that intrigues me the most. These are the secrets I will attempt to unfold for you as you keep reading.
Secret Number 1: Training
“ We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. ”
— Archilochus
We have all heard the word training, but what is it? I have heard it mostly in relation to training for athletes. But it must go beyond that. Working from Davis’s papers, training includes 3 elements.
These include:
Learning
Practicing
Experiencing
Of critical importance is following the sequence stated above. Training does not begin with practice or experience. Too many times we try to skip the learning element only to fail or have to stop and start over with learning. Take a SEAL learning to become a sniper. In the learning stage, you become knowledgeable about computer ballistic data, body position for firing a gun, mental management, breath management, etc. You practice this mentally through dry firing, visualization, and time on the range. You take this out to real life or drills. You miss. Our initial reaction is to blame something or someone. It is best to look at what was weak, missing or flawed in terms of your learning, which rippled into your practice and impacted your experience.
Training Element 1: Learning
Learning is key to a successful life. While many of us have been taught, few of us have been taught to learn. Learning ensures we’ve got what we need to produce a result.
People often think they are not good at something or were not born for it. In fact, they do not know how to learn in a way to lay the foundation they need to develop the talent or skill they are after. Rather than learning how to learn, they give up. Learning is the foundation for becoming good at something.
What Is Learning:
According to Davis learning is gathering “sufficient information about something, and then organizing it in a specific sequence, so that when we move into the practice phase, it will eventually produce a desired result.”
He continues, “Learning does not produce the result... it makes the result possible. Learning is the work that you must do before one can practice anything.” It is “careful study, meticulous note-taking, and committed time.”
Let's also be clear what learning is not. It is not Google, YouTube, apps, etc. These may in fact be places to get the bits of information that go into the creation of your learning, but they are not learning in and of themselves.
The Phases of Learning:
Learning comprises two phases: the gathering of sufficient information and the organizing of that information into a sequence that, when repeated, will produce the desired result. Combined, I call this active learning. It is deep work and concentration.
The Gathering Phase:
This starts with scanning the universe for data on the topic. These sources include all the avenues cited above and the seeking out of experts. At this point, we are studying sources, discovering research, and taking detailed notes on the work that has been found.
The Organizing Phase:
Next we organize the data. It is here that we bring process and sequence together. We need a system that makes the study and recall process a priority. This is a critical step. Several systems exist to assist in the organizing of data. Ryan Holiday and Scott Young offer two approaches in terms of their systems. Holiday refers to his as marginalia. While Young calls his ultra learning. Both approaches work. Find what works for you.
Learning then gives you a solid base and foundation to work from. Without it, you will chase your tail or keep endlessly searching for the magical solution. We have all seen people move from trainer to trainer yet never move forward by skipping the learning phase.
Knowing how to learn opens the world to us. Think about the important areas in your life that are now changeable. Start dreaming again.
Think about this example. Lanny Bassham in his book Freedom Flight recounts the return of a prisoner of war from Vietnam. While held, he visualized playing golf hundreds of times as part of his way to maintain his sanity. Upon deplaning in San Diego, he asks to be taken to the golf course. He plays and almost shoots par. His handlers are amazed and ask how he did that. He replies that while held captive he mentally visualized playing this course every day. Because he learned properly, mental practice alone was effective enough to perform as desired.
Now that we have a solid base of knowledge, we can get to the fun part, and that is practicing with the confidence that our efforts will pay off.
Training Element 2: Practice
“ I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
— Bruce Lee
What a Monkee learned about high performance. Recently, I was driving while listening to the radio, and there was a quick interview with Micky Dolenz of the Monkees. He was talking about being in England in the ’60s and meeting the Beatles. He went to their studio with his best bell bottoms and sunglasses, looking as hip as possible, but when he walked in he was surprised by what he found. The Beatles, he thought, would be dressed to impress, but they wore simple workman black pants and white tee-shirts.
Soon after he walked in, John said, “Hey, Monkee man, want to hear what we’re doing? John gave him a quick listen to the song “Good Morning” from their Sgt. Peppers album.
Shortly after that, some staff brought in tea for a break. And then promptly at the end of 15 minutes, John said, “Let's get back to work.” Looking back, Dolenz realized that the Beatles were more successful than others because they simply put in the hours of practice and worked harder than anyone else.
We see the same ethic of practice in the SEAL teams, but there’s much more to it than just simply working hard or putting in the hours.
Think about your own career, hobbies, and other pursuits where you had put in those hours and really got nowhere besides older. It’s almost like we were running in place, which is what happens anytime we are not deliberate about our practice. And if our practices were poor, that only produced the wrong results. We need other elements beyond the hours. And where that starts is with deliberate practice.
Deliberate Practice:
K. Anders Ericsson’s work defined deliberate practice as mastering individual tasks, so when repeated, it produces a very specific skill. Then as your skills improve, you practice at more challenging levels, intending to master each level. The purpose of deliberate practice is to gain mastery.
When you practice deliberately you take the best of what you learned and put it into play. Practice is important since it will provide you with feedback and an opportunity to explore and expand what you have learned. You are still a student, but insights come your way. And practice can reveal and fill the holes in your learning. It allows for exploration and expansion of what you have learned to date.
We accomplish this by first breaking the skill set into its component tasks. Ericsson stated that you do not perform a skill many times. Rather, you break down the tasks of each skill to become an expert. You then focus on improving those task sets during practice or day-to-day activities, often paired with immediate feedback from a coach.
It is a 3-step process. First, you plan for the practice. Second, you use checklists to ensure that the practice meets the practice objectives. Third, you debrief the practice.
I recently went shooting with Eric. I grabbed my gun, ammo, spotting scope, and mat. It was a 5-mile drive up a mountain with no one nearby, no cell service, etc. A safe place to shoot. I did well and learned a lot from him.
When we were done, we debriefed the practice session. I discovered while the practice was good, it was far from deliberate practice. But by the time we were done, we had developed a practice plan and a series of checklists to make the next practice more focused to gain the mastery that Ericsson discussed.
Here’s what we ended up with by the time we finished:
Step 1: Plan & preparation.
Step 2: Go through checklists.
Step 3: Debrief and update plan and checklists.
Now. Let’s go a little deeper into each step.
Step 1: Planning & Preparation
The first step is to determine your overall objective. Is the purpose of the practice to have fun, build a skill, both, or something else? Establishing the purpose will not only prevent you from wasting your time, but it will also enhance the experience as it brings focus to your efforts.
To my surprise Eric explained that the place to start when defining our objective was by declaring how we wanted to feel when we were done practicing. This gave us an overall objective that made defining specific and measurable results both obvious and easy.
Showing up to our practice session, I had tasks that I had wanted to work on but had not articulated them. I wanted to work on breath control, trigger pull, and follow through. Done properly, these would have been articulated, and then reviewed in terms of the technical learning of each and a plan and objective for each task. I would have also developed checklists related to each task.
But also to my surprise I learned that planning and preparation isn’t just about the skill to be practiced. I learned that other issues need to be brought in and thought through to ensure the practice produces the desired results. Eric refers to this as “Creating The Environment”. Oddly, but in hindsight obviously, it all started with a “Transportation Checklist,” which led to a “Range Operations Checklist” and then to a “Safety Checklist” and then finally to a “Weapons Checklist”. To the novice these might seem simply pragmatic, but to professional trainer these are the things that produce the environment required for highly effective training.
Transportation:
It all starts with transportation. If you can't get there and back safely, you've already lost. Transport ensures that we can safely and reliably move the required personnel and equipment to and from the area of operations. This reduces distraction and stress, which allows the team to focus on that which should be focused on.
The checklist:
Means of transport in and out, including alternatives.
Operational check of vehicle to include engine, oil, fuel, tire wear, and tire pressure.
Assessment that vehicle can carry number and pounds of equipment to and from operational location.
Determining status of transport operators (pilots, drivers, etc) in terms of safe operation and experience.
Understanding transport plan and alternates.
Weather during transport.
Thinking about this, it should have been obvious. A friend was at the same location practicing when his ATV broke down. It was a 6-mile hike out over rugged mountains with all his gear. Luckily, he made it only losing a toenail.
Range Operations:
Range operation is optimizing for the desired experience or mission success. This includes environmental factors such as weather, altitude, and ground conditions. Safety is preparation for any event that can stop the operation. This spans from minor events such as sunburn, dehydration, and cuts and bruises to major injuries.
The Checklist: General Range Operations
Making sure food, shelter, water and fire are available.
Making sure targets are operational, if practicing. Are tools and paint available for target repair?
Communication, including a person knowing one's location, schedule, and action to take if arrival is not according to schedule. This also includes the means of communication, whether a cell phone, satellite phone, or other system.
There are paths of fire noting safety concerns, and vertical and horizontal zones of fire.
The Checklist: Safety
A first aid kit available for minor cuts and injuries.
A trauma kit and individuals trained for medical emergencies.
Identification of the Range Safety Officer.
Clothing in case of adverse weather.
With the above, in the future I would be ready to arrive and depart safely, have a good shooting experience, be prepared for any breakdowns at the range, and ensure that I could treat any cuts, wounds, and stings. But there is one additional checklist required. A weapons checklist:
The Checklist: Weapons
Gun
Allen wrenches
Torque wrenches
Screwdriver
Glass cleaner, wipes
Lubrication
Cleaning kit
Ground pad
Shooting sock
Range Finder
Spotting Scope
Tripod
Ballistic computer
Dope Book
Again, in the past I have forgotten something on the list that inhibited my practice. You cannot have deliberate practice with a loose scope on your gun.
Step 2: Practice Component Tasks
Once the objectives are clear, you can then break out the skills related to each task you are working on. Arriving at my practice location, we first assessed the vertical and horizontal zones of fire. We found the zones to be safe. This is imperative given the distance a bullet can fly. I know a person whose brother was shooting and he put a bullet into a neighbor's house. Thick woods and a half-mile distance did not stop the bullet, only to have a detective come with a laser site to prove that the shot came from their location.
Now the practice can begin. Let’s take breath control as an example of one component task. The objective is to develop a natural respiratory pause (NRP). The NRP is a natural, easy, steady breathing cadence intended not only to provide the best opportunity for you to break the shot, but also to help you remain calm, clear-headed, and to avoid fatigue for any further engagements.
The Checklist: Breathing
Normal Breathing in and out before the shot.
Achieving a natural respiratory pause before taking the shot IN x Out x Pause x SHOT x IN.
Not holding your breath, which would increase heart rate and induce stress.
The Checklist: Dry Firing
Dry fire practicing NPR until calling center mass hit
Re-sequence with round
“Boom”
Call shot
Reacquire target
Spotter call
Re-chamber round
Repeat
Coaching and Feedback on Each Component Task:
Throughout the practice session, Eric would give me feedback. This included encouragement when I did things right, and information and advice on how to correct tasks when needed. Having this feedback in real time improved my skill set immensely and immediately.
Putting together both the planning elements along with the actual practice proved to me that this process made me a better long range shooter. And I could carry this system over into many aspects of my life.
Step 3: Debrief
Arriving back from the practice session, we then debriefed the overall session. This included reviewing and updating the checklists where required, giving advice where I should review technical learning, and putting together the initial elements to plan for the next practice. I now understood the George Leonard quote: “For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.”
Imagine spending time and energy practicing with no result. Imagine how it feels to practice the wrong thing or the wrong way. We have all been there. We feel we have failed; we lose confidence, and many times give up.
Now imagine what it would feel like to know that you could get really good at anything that you needed or wanted to. What would now be possible for you and your life? You pick up new skills; you gain confidence in what you just practiced, but also gain experience in the process that you can apply elsewhere in your life. Success builds on itself.
In all this effort to practice, I learned an important lesson. I recently saw a TED talk in which deep diving champion Martin Štěpánek told Kimi Werner before her deep dive that “when you feel the need to go fast, slow down.” I found that true for all the steps of practice.
We now have a solid basis for learning and practice. But training requires one additional step. Learning and practice are incomplete without experience. With perfect practice, you are now ready to engage in experience.
Training Element 3: Experience
Practice is usually done in a safe environment. Experience introduces new factors into our effort. A different location, temperature, noise, an audience, live fire, and competition are among the many. We need to make the experience as powerful as possible.
For example, let’s consider shooting versus hunting. On a gun range with a static shooting table, you hit the target 95% of the time. When hunting, your accuracy drops to 75% of the time given that terrain, shooting position, weather, mental pressure, and a host of other factors come into play. You need to experience the environment you will be working in.
Experience is the basis to determine whether or not our learn / practice is effective, meaning we take action, measure it against the desired impact, identify the gaps and update learn / practice. We then can identify what needs to be stopped, started, modified, managed or maintained. It is a system that loops back on itself continually.
It’s when we skip or fail to see the loop from experience back to learning and practice that we fail to evolve. When we fail to evolve, we label ourselves as “not good at something” and then we’re destined to live with no growth because we think our skills and capacities are as fixed as our eye color.
We think of experience as the end point when in fact it is a loop in the process. Life is continually learning, training, and experience.
Experience as a Process:
To make experience powerful, follow these three steps:
Step 1: Go live or scrimmage.
Step 2: Assess desired impact vs actual.
Step 3: Update Learning/Practice.
Step 1. Go Live or Scrimmage. Make the experience as real as possible. If you are going to be on a stage, find a stage. Add people to the audience. Use equipment that you plan to use for a mission or performance. Do not assume things will go perfectly. Experience an equipment breakdown, for example. Finally, multiple experiences are required to provide the best feedback.
SEALs, for example, will build exact replicas of the mission, in addition to, transport, weapons, weather, terrain, etc. This allows them to get experience before the mission.
Step 2. Assess Desired Impact vs Actual. Once the experience is over, it is time to assess outcomes versus objectives. On a personal level, it is time to revisit and take stock of your results. How did you do? What went well? What did not? Beyond a personal assessment, have an outside group reflect on your results. Where revisiting is mostly internal, reflection is taking your results and having others analyze and critique them. It is important to have an outside group guide the reflection. You want their honest thoughts and recommendations.
Step 3. Update Learning/Practice. Using an internal and external assessment, issues can be identified and results improved. As Davis states, “Many of us are running around with some pretty entrenched habits of reacting to things, and since we can’t fix it quickly, we don’t even bother to try, thus leaving us enslaved to our default behavior forever.”
Experience then solidifies our training:
First, experience helps you determine your strengths and weaknesses. It provides the information you need to identify and fill in any gaps. Second, it gives you a basis on how to respond to circumstances as they occur. You are not surprised and can respond appropriately. Last, and maybe most important, it gives you confidence.
When you truly experience something the right way, you move forward as fast as humanly possible. You are at your best every moment because you have a formula. Davis states that you need to “keep that which you are working on in front of you so that every time you read, attend a class, or engage with people, you can notice and observe both your progress, as well as your shortfalls and breakdowns.”
Trust Yourself. How many things have you abandoned because you thought you didn’t have it in you to complete them? What’s worse is how many things have you not even tried because of the things you have abandoned? What would you do if you truly trusted yourself not to fail?
The focus of training is small incremental improvements. We hear the word resilience a lot these days. Many see it as toughing out short-term gains rather than the commitment to a lengthy grind toward long-term goals using learning, practice, and experience.
This training regimen will give you the process to become more resilient, focused, and adaptive. These are all elements needed for your success.
Now that we have received our training, we will be called upon to participate on a mission. This brings in a new element, planning. Training gave us technical skills. Planning will add management skills.
Secret 2: Planning
The SEALs have an extensive, robust, and living system for planning. Their method for planning is something we should learn and live by, personally and professionally. By learning and incorporating the SEAL planning system you’ll not only reach more of your goals, but it won’t take long before you start going after larger ones.
Plan - Rehearse - Modify - Plan - Rehearse - Modify:
You put a plan together, then rehearse it. Make changes, rehearse it again, and again and again. This is key. Most plans are static and reflect a point in time. Since when has your life been static? All plans need to be dynamic to reflect the realities of life and the constant change and adaptation required to succeed. Let your plan allow you to succeed. Poor planning will only result in playing catchup always behind the power curve.
SEAL Planning Approach:
Brent Gleeson, a retired SEAL, in an article in Forbes magazine lists 7 steps for planning:
Identify the Specific Objective
Understand Blockages
List Resources
Apply Lessons Learned
Actions
Red Teaming
Develop Contingencies
This system provides a fundamental, proactive approach to planning. It aligns objectives to the organization's mission, identifies elements needed to complete an assignment, as well as impediments, and brings in outsiders to give the plan a critical look.
Planning Steps:
Let's look at these steps in a little more depth.
Step 1. Identifying the Specific Objective. How many times have you seen groups brought together to work and execute a plan with the group spending many hours trying to figure out the what and why of the assignment? Why am I here? What are we supposed to be doing?
Gleeson states that the “objective must be concise, quantifiable, time-bound.” In addition, it must align with the organization's overall mission and strategy.
In the business world, I have seen this fail more times than I can count in acquisitions. Instead of the acquisition being aligned with the organization's mission, it is only aligned with an individual's desire for a bigger organization and promotion. The chase begins, and no one -- not even a due diligence team -- stops to ask if this is in line with the company's mission. Post acquisition, a new team is brought in to try and rectify the mess.
In the military, a similar problem exists. An individual looks to be a hero and puts his team at risk for a medal, to be seen as an aggressive leader.
Too many times we confuse opportunity with an objective. However, many times success is based on ruthless discipline on not jumping on every opportunity. Focus is key.
Step 2. Understand Blockages. SEALs see this as the second step. There are two types of blockages. The first are ones that the team has control over, and the second are those the team has no control over. For those blockages where there is control, the risks should be identified as well as how those risks will be mitigated. Risks that cannot be controlled need to be identified. Over time, ways to mitigate those risks may be identified. In all cases, uncontrollable risks need to stay front and center as the plan is put together.
A good example of blockages is the mission to eliminate Osama bin Laden. Blockages included flying over another country's airspace, insertion, and dealing with neighbors during the mission, among others. These blockages or constraints had to be dealt with up front in order to build a plan to execute the mission.
Step 3. List Resources. Resources include people, supplies, dollars, equipment, and office space for the team to work in. Once identified, you must determine who has access to these resources. It is here many times that the planning teams have to begin to interact with other staff within and outside the organization to fully execute the mission. This is required to obtain the necessary resources to carry out the mission and bring in staff from other organizations for assistance.
For the SEALs, working with other Navy elements, other DoD branches of service, and intelligence agencies is required for most missions. For the Bin Laden mission, a life size replica of his house was built to practice the mission by Navy Seabees, transport into Pakistan was provided by the Army’s Night stalker unit, and real time imagery by a variety of DoD and intelligence organizations. Adding resources from other organizations can be challenging: Special leadership is required to bring all elements into a focused team, and political baggage needs to be left at the door.
Step 4. Apply Lessons Learned. As Mark Twain said, “History never repeats itself, but it rhymes.” Thus, it is important to look at similar efforts and learn from them. This includes accessing those with experience. It is critical to get the right people for this step. You are looking for wisdom from this group, not just war stories.
Applying lessons learned can take many forms. In terms of the SEALs, when Eric Davis became a Sniper Instructor there was this debilitating practice called the K.I.S.S. method, which means “Keep It Simple Stupid.” It was debilitating because the art of sniping is a complex skill, and complex skills require complex training methods.
So to fix the high failure rate that this antiquated approach to training was causing, Eric created tactical standard operating procedures (TSOPs) for every element of training. He even made small laminated TSOPs for sniper students to keep in their Ghillie suits while stalking through the sweltering desert to take out their target. These TSOPs radically elevated their performance by allowing them to notice, remember and thereby master the hundreds of previously hidden performance elements they needed to successfully stalk a target. It allowed them to do this not by keeping it simple but by “Making It Simple Smart” (M.I.S.S.). It’s how he taught them to cross the complexity of a situation into the mastery they desired.
In the business world, applying lessons learned is often overlooked with bids and proposals. Growth is key to many businesses. I have seen multi-billion dollar efforts where proposals are treated as a new discovery, with organizational boundaries sometimes preventing access to individuals with knowledge and experience who can help. (A blockage.) This is especially true if the business development team is the only group in line to capture the bonus dollars for a win. Worse, in many corporations that team is usually only responsible for a win and the team that has to implement the work is left on the sidelines. Lessons learned is truly a place where organizational silos cannot be allowed to exist.
Step 5. Action. Now that we have done our homework in terms of blockages, resources, and lessons learned, we turn to action. Gleeson defines this as making a list of all the actions leading up to and during the mission execution. This action list must contain each activity, persons responsible, and time frame/due date. Of critical importance is identifying the lead and team responsible for the action. Accountability is key here.
Step 6. Red Teaming. This step is tricky. You are bringing in outside experts to question the plan. These experts may be those with similar experience, unique expertise, or specialized knowledge of people, geography, and other domains applicable to the mission. To get the right people for this task, leaders must cast a wide net and find the best. And not be afraid of bringing in a person with a few rough edges. If you cannot find the individuals yourself, there are companies that specialize in “Black Hat” efforts.
Red teaming is accomplished by asking:
Why won’t this plan work?
What gaps exist?
What has not been thought of?
The planning team then makes adjustments to address holes and gaps identified by the Red Team.
The challenge many times with this step is to keep things professional. I have seen this step turn into bar fights. The plan gets lost in terms of hurt feelings, political agendas, and egos. It takes strong leadership on the part of the planning team and the Red Team to keep the focus on the mission and not let the effort lose sight of the input needed to make the plan successful.
Step 7. Develop Contingencies. The SEALs have a saying related to this planning step: two is one, and one is none. Rarely do things go exactly as planned. After all, you have an enemy or competition executing their own plan. It is a dynamic environment. Plans are required to account for each contingency. If you are a small unit behind enemy lines, you do not want to rely on hope. Thus, each element of the plan must be detailed. From the mission objective to clothing, food, and ammunition. And each step includes if A does not happen, what is B?
This means doing more than cursory plans. Putting in the hours doing a detailed and thorough plan will ultimately save you time and effort from having to “fix” issues. Planning means you have control. Fixing means you have lost control and are reacting.
The plan should be a living document like a map. You do not look at a map once and then take off through the wilderness. A plan is your map. Use it.
With the plan developed, you go out to practice and experience it. This is critical and an element that many organizations just do not get. And, thus, issues, mistakes, and poor assumptions never get uncovered. You rely on hope as a management tool.
After practice comes an After Action Report. According to Gleeson, you ask 5 critical questions:
What were we trying to accomplish? What was the objective?
Where did we hit (or miss) our objective?
What was the root cause of our result? (Ask the five WHYs)
As a team, what should we stop, start, or continue doing? (Be specific)
What are our key lessons learned? (List up to three)
Once this is done, it is time to start over. The plan gets revised, rehearsed, and reviewed again. And again.
SEAL Planning Equals Results:
For a SEAL, planning is not just an exercise. It is incorporated into the day-to-day life of a SEAL. Davis recounted a story to me about working with a Marine colonel. The colonel told Davis that he hated when he had to work with SEALs on missions. “They never follow the plan” he said. Davis responded, “Yes, sir, we are here to fight the war, not the plan.” The point is that the plan gives you a detailed map that can get you from A to B directly as planned or with already identified contingencies. A SEAL team tends to thrive within contingencies. It’s what makes them so good.
Corporate Planning:
I have seen planning move from an important element to guide organizational elements to just an annual financial planning exercise plus a mid-year review. In other words, divisions and other levels of organization do little except advise the accountants on revenue and profit forecasts or worse yet, told what their revenue and profits will be. This leaves management with little to no insight on growth, opportunities, challenges, competition, and other factors impacting each organizational element.
What is the result? An organization like Boeing where total focus was on financials and stock price while planes, orbiters, and refuelers were all having performance problems.
Use the Plan:
Regular staff meetings should be used to plan reviews. Using the above planning elements, you review where you are and what adjustments need to be made. This gives everyone a framework to make the plan a living document from which all are executing. If done right, a plan gets you to the objective. No more reacting to issues and trying to figure out how to plug holes that should have been identified in the plan.
Secret 3: Human Performance
“We will train both soul and body when we accustom ourselves to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, scarcity of food, hardness of bed, abstaining from pleasures, and enduring pains.”
— Musonius Rufus
Much has been written about SEALs in terms of physical fitness from pre-BUD/s through various missions. There are many books on how to conquer BUDs successfully both mentally and physically. But I think in much of the writing you do not find the purpose of BUD/s and follow on training. I think this is key and something I have not seen written about. Incorporating the elements of a SEALs human performance will make you effective for life's challenges mentally and physically.
Whether stated overtly or not, I believe the purpose of SEAL human performance is to make a SEAL efficient. They are not trying to make the strongest man, fastest runner, or quickest swimmer. The goal is to make a SEAL efficient in terms of strength, endurance, balance, flexibility, resilience, pain and metabolism. If a SEAL is not efficient in terms of their human performance, they may fail on a mission and bring the team down. The same applies to you.
Human Performance is not a Stovepipe:
Rather it is a complex mix of physical fitness, nutrition, and mental fitness. While human performance has been studied for centuries, it is complex and is full of competing theories, studies, and results. One only needs to think about diet and nutrition as an example: Keto, paleo, vegan, pescatarian, vegetarian, intermittent fasting, etc.
Much of the problem is that each area is studied in isolation when human performance is a personalized and integrated issue. There is no one single solution, especially when overlaid with a Special Ops tempo. With this in mind, let's take a look at an integrated approach.
The SEALs World of Human Performance:
Step 1: Strength. As far as I can discern, strength training during Buds has no weight machines. It is totally body weight along with devices such as boats, logs, ropes, and pull-up bars. A SEAL needs to be strong to carry themselves, a heavy rucksack, guns and ammo, and assorted other equipment. But as important is the ability to use strength with the above over sand, mountains, swamps, and a host of other conditions.
I recently saw a YouTube video of the world's strongest man doing the obstacle course at Fort Campbell, KY. His strength could get him through and over some of the obstacles, but it was also a hindrance in others. Mark Twight wrote an excellent article titled Training for the Apocalypse. The article gives a great summary on what will be needed to survive such an ordeal. You want to be strong, but not too strong. Other elements are needed. He goes on to discuss why you would rather have a SEAL or SAS member with you at 185 pounds versus a 230 pound strongman. If the strongman gets hurt and cannot be carried, he surmises that the team may look at his well developed glutes and wonder if they would be better cooked on a spit or a crockpot.
Step 2: Endurance. Running and swimming make up much of the Buds endurance training and mission support. You need to be strong enough to carry an 80-pound rucksack for many miles and through different environments and weather. The same for swimming. Hot, cold, dry, wet, snow, and darkness. You do not need to be the quickest, but you need to be able to go far and through whatever nature throws at you. You need to find the proper tradeoff between strength and endurance.
Step 3: Balance. For a SEAL, balance is not just having two feet on the ground. It is knowing up, down, and sideways on land, air, and water. This is a critical skill. You need to be able to walk a fallen log over a creek or river. You need to walk day or night with your ruck over ditches, through rocky creek bottoms, through downed trees, snow and steep terrain. Underwater in the dark presents its own challenges as does parachuting in darkness to a location. You train for this awareness.
Step 4: Flexibility. You do not need to be a gymnast, but being flexible is necessary. You need to get up and down quickly; crawl under, over and through elements; climb, and a host of other modes of movement. I think the best examples of this are the many YouTube videos of SEAL candidates doing the obstacle course in Coronado. A single fitness domain will not get you through the course. Find a course to test your own ability. Even if it is just a playground with monkey bars.
Step 5: Pain. Being a SEAL means dealing with pain. Pain comes with the job. Hiking to a mission does not allow for one to stop and deal with a hurting knee, sprained ankle, bite, sting, or a blister. You power through. Pain management is key.
Of equal importance is being able to recover from injury quickly. Given the work a SEAL does, somewhere in their career an injury will occur. Being strong along all the dimensions of fitness will help you recover quicker and get back to the job faster.
Step 6: Metabolic Efficiency. You need to be a fat-burning machine. On a mission, there is no room for three gallons of Gatorade and 20 power bars to keep you burning glycogen. You need to be metabolically efficient to keep going. I have never seen this stated as a SEAL objective, but without it you will fail. I am not saying that you need to follow a ketogenic diet. You need to train your body through nutrition and fitness to burn fat. Working at a high tempo in a calorie-deficient manner is required.
Step 7: Mental Acuity. Being a SEAL requires having a box of mental tools. One is dealing with fear. Jumping from planes, releasing underwater from submarines, working with explosives are all high risk activities. Fear, in a healthy manner, is a part of these activities. But through learning and skill building, the fear can be controlled. Managing fear is key. That means learning how to manage risk. You can then use fear as a motivation.
None of us wants to be uncomfortable. But as a SEAL you mentally need to learn to be uncomfortable alone and with a team. Cold water is one example. You cannot dread jumping in. You need to mentally move to accepting it as part of the job. Training by taking cold showers may be required. Being uncomfortable and going negative is not acceptable.
Being a SEAL is working with others. Teams and brotherhoods come with friction. It is part of the territory of being human. To succeed, you need to reach a level of professionalism where collaboration and competition work to propel the team beyond its individual members. Lennon and McCartney of the Beatles are a good example of this. They collaborated with each other to produce music. But they also competed with each other in terms of learning from the other and propelling each other and the Beatles further.
Finally, I will throw in resilience. The word and concept is a bit overused lately. Simply, it is accepting daily the successes and failures that it takes to reach a goal. This is true as one or as a team. Each day, you are getting better. You accept setbacks, learn, and move forward tomorrow. No quitting.
Step 8: Recovery. An area that is getting more attention is recovery. The old formula of rigorous workouts day after day is getting a new look. To get the most out of the workouts and training the body needs time to recover. This is where muscle growth takes place. Watch carefully here as the SEALs and other Special Ops teams get a better understanding on how to incorporate recovery into their regimes.
Human performance is like a puzzle.
Each piece is separate, but you need to stitch them together to make the picture whole. You do not need to meet the standards of a SEAL. But you need to optimize your mental and physical health, increase your immunity, and survive the zombies mentioned in Twight’s article, if need be. (This includes internal and external zombies.) Discovering and integrating your own human performance plan will make you stronger and more successful. Remember, we are all different. You will need to develop your own personal plan.
Let me share a story. I had read about MovNat in various places. I saw that they were having a retreat in Costa Rica, so I signed myself and my wife up. My assumption was that we would do a couple of hours of movement-based activity in the morning and afternoon with time to relax on the Pacific beach in between. Rather, it was 8 hours a day of movement, combatives, lifting and carrying logs, throwing and catching rocks, and swimming. Also, there was no coffee or wine, to my wife's horror. The last day culminated with a 3-hour run down a mountain barefoot, swimming up a river, crawling up and through jungle foliage, fireman carries, climbing trees, and running back up the mountain. Then a trip to the water to practice rescuing a person drowning and bringing them ashore. But we succeeded! And most of the class was composed of individuals being certified to teach MovNat, and younger than us by 30 or so years!
Looking back on it, I realized that I should do something like this regularly. I thought I was in shape and was. But in gym shape. You need to get outside and test yourself in nature. Only then can you measure your true human performance skills. That is how the SEALs do it. Sea, air and land. Laird Hamilton, Wim Hoff, and MovNat all offer ways to test yourself.
Training, planning, and human performance are lifelong pursuits. You change, the world changes, and life is a constant stream of adaptation. However, without these tools you will be constantly reacting to life rather than living your destiny. Take these SEAL tools and make them an everyday part of your life.
Pat
