Strategy Meets Reality Podcast

Mission Command in Reality: Don Vandergriff on Building Thinking Leaders

• Mike Jones • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Mission command isn’t a process—it’s a culture.

In this episode, Mike Jones is joined by Don Vandergriff, retired military leader and pioneer of outcomes-based learning, to explore what mission command really looks like in practice. Far from a doctrinal buzzword, it’s about building trust, empowering people, and creating space for thinking leaders.

Don draws on decades of experience to show why control, ego, and risk aversion are the enemies of adaptability—and how learning must be active, informal, and continuous. From Von Moltke to tactical decision games, this conversation is packed with insights for anyone leading in complexity.

If you want to stop managing and start developing real leadership, this one’s for you.

🔍 In this episode:

  • Why mission command is about culture, not command structures
  • The critical role of trust, intent, and empowerment
  • How constraints and control kill initiative
  • Why most After Action Reviews are broken
  • Using historical insights to shape modern leadership
  • How to build critical thinking and initiative with decision games

🎧 Keywords: mission command, leadership, trust, empowerment, military culture, decision-making, adaptability, learning, critical thinking, Von Moltke

📘 Learn more about Don’s work: https://donvandergriff.substack.com/

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💬 Connect with host Mike Jones → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-h-jones/

Don Vandergriff (00:00)
when you walk through that classroom door, you've got to leave the ego at the door. You've got to be willing to let people voice the solutions to all the problems.

Mike Jones (00:03)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (00:09)
the culture of mission command is all about empowering people.

in the learning environment, we've got to make failure acceptable as long as we can justify why we fail.

why are we willing to constrain so much? And again, it goes back to ego and risk aversion,

Mike Jones (01:00)
Welcome to Strategy Meets Reality podcast. Welcome, Don. I've been admire of your work, It's great to have you on the show.

Don Vandergriff (01:08)
Oh, thank you for having me. And again, you're a brother from another mother. So it's I enjoy this. I'm doing about podcasts a month or every three weeks now. It's pretty cool. What can I do to help you and your audience?

Mike Jones (01:20)
if you want to know about mission command, you'd look no further than Don. your stuff, especially your substack that you've got at the moment is really clawing at the idea of mission command, how it can be used. And that's what I want to explore today. You you've extensively explored mission command and its historical roots, but how do you see its principles influencing effective execution in today's

complex operational environments.

Don Vandergriff (01:41)
Here's what the latest conflicts have taught us is that war always evolves, but the principles of war remain the same in that it's despite drones and AI and all their uses like in Ukraine. I agree with Wolf Owen in his latest book. It's really good. If you get a chance to interview him, I would do it because

Mike Jones (02:07)
yeah.

Don Vandergriff (02:08)
the book is incredible. It's really, and what's funny about Wolf and I, he's like, wow, thanks for the review I've done over and over is we have a contrast. He thinks all command is command, whereas I say mission command is a form of command, but it's more culture. So starting with that introduction, my point is what he's been talking about, we concur completely. There's nothing really new out there. It's, it may,

expand the scope of the battlefield and the speed. But my point is it's even more demand for a mission command culture. And what I mean by that is what we tend to do with a hierarchical culture, industrial age culture, like the US military, the US government and the British is when we introduce faster and faster decision making technology, we tend to control more. Okay.

Mike Jones (03:03)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (03:04)
And it's because of the award systems of the culture of both our, I can speak, our militaries are very similar. And again, I've said this over and over. I've worked with a lot of British officers and NCOs, soldiers like I do here, and they've been incredible. It says nothing bad about them. It's the culture that has been evolved over the last, especially recently in the last couple of decades.

with more more infusion of control and the cultural Marxism influence runs totally counter to the doctrine, not even the doctrine, doctrine is a bad word, the culture of Auftragstaktik, the German word, which is badly translated in the English version. So to get to your answer to your question, people, I did a workshop a week ago for

Mike Jones (03:52)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (03:59)
the Northern Virginia emergency system, which had first responders, police, firemen, and emergency management technicians, paramedics basically. And it was their cap, their mid-level. At their level, they're like the platoon commanders for you guys and the platoon leaders and company commanders for us. Experienced 15 to 20 years, 25 years, great people. So we did the whole morning of mission command outcomes-based learning workshop.

And then the afternoon we went to the nearby battle of first bull run from the American Civil War to talk about those examples. And every one of these guys and there was one lady who was outstanding. got a couple of emails afterwards. got, I couldn't leave at 1600. I started at zero eight. couldn't leave. Cause I, but that's, that's what we want to see. And I'm willing to stay around as long as they, until my wife calls me and says, get home. but.

Mike Jones (04:52)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (04:53)
They all love it, they all want it, but they say the same thing. When are you going to teach our superiors this stuff?

Mike Jones (05:00)
Yes, yes, yes. see that all the time when you go in and you're trying to teach, I'll do the same, I teach mission command in organizations. And again, the same thing, well, it's all great you're teaching this, but what about the people that lead us? We can't do anything or apply these principles if they're trying to micromanage or control everything that we're doing.

Don Vandergriff (05:02)
But go ahead.

Yep. And they do that again because of the flash of news where, man, you just got a guy killed or you killed a civilian. Why didn't you make sure that didn't happen in the, the, in the law enforcement side or the EMS side, the fire side. But, but as I did every fire captain for Washington DC five years ago in a, in two, two day workshops. Great.

Mike Jones (05:37)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (05:49)
guy named Tony Carroll was then the training officer for the DC Fire Department. He's now retired, but he's volunteer work south of here. And we just talked the other day, because half these guys and gals knew him from this workshop two weeks ago. And he tried to do the same thing. He tried to get it to the upper levels, and they're telling me the guys and gals in the middle.

that the more control they put on it, the worse it gets. Because they're having to wait for a certain level of management to arrive on scene, if we're talking first responders, and it's too late then. Because they're so afraid, but the military's the same way. And here's the irony, the irony is, and I'm gonna bring up more of these in my Substack articles.

Mike Jones (06:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (06:39)
actual examples of what works great, has worked great historically and not so great. But what you tend to see when a culture, an organizational culture, and I say that broadly because you have, it's the same impact regardless of the type of organization you have, you tend to evolve and be able to adapt to the evolving environment around you.

Mike Jones (07:05)
Mmm.

Don Vandergriff (07:06)
with better decisions. But the first thing that people have to realize, here's what the US military does. Okay, we're gonna do mission command and they'll plaster it over PowerPoint slides and we're gonna do John Boyd's OODA loop and they plaster it over and they'll bring in a senior leader or senior non-commissioned officer to give the talk on it. And then this is really a big thing with all these leadership development organizations here. I don't know the scope of

in Britain but I'm sure it's similar. They'll bring in a retired four-star or three-star, you know, high-level seal operator and nothing against Jaco for example. Jaco's awesome. He does great stuff. I've even sent him a copy of one of my books. Hadn't heard anything yet but I'm not criticizing individuals but they'll bring in these people that just talk at you.

Mike Jones (07:43)
Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (08:00)
and they don't know how to integrate. Mission command, the culture of mission command is all about empowering people.

And when you teach it, you have to teach it like it has to be run. So you have to, immersion learning, experiential learning, all those great academic terms. But that is hard for the senior leaders, regardless of what organization they accept. There's two reasons for that.

Mike Jones (08:12)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (08:28)
One reason is ego. So when I was consulting Military Academy West Point for four years, which was incredible, the guy Colonel Casey Haskins, one of the best trainers ever and then one of his protegees, now Colonel Chad Foster, who is currently deputy commandant at West Point where he's doing great stuff up there. But he's a lone voice in the woods. So what I taught with those guys, you had some of the best

Mike Jones (08:31)
Mm.

Nice.

Don Vandergriff (08:55)
career-wise people at Military Academy teaching in the Department of Military Instruction. But I would say to them, when you walk through that classroom door, you've got to leave the ego at the door. You've got to be willing to let people voice the solutions to all the problems.

Mike Jones (09:05)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (09:10)
I can give you my answer and it would be the prescribed academic answer, but that's not why we're here. We're here for you to be able to make mistakes and make your opinion.

Mike Jones (09:17)
Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (09:20)
and then take critiques about it to build your character to get better. And I can't do that if I'm sitting up here with a 220 PowerPoint deck with charts on it and telling you how smart I am. That's not the purpose of it. The purpose is to make you better and I can't do that with a lecture. But in our hierarchical society, we have a very hierarchical society here with exceptions. And it's funny, those exceptions are

Mike Jones (09:38)
Yo.

Don Vandergriff (09:48)
incredibly successful and the morale of the workforce or the military force is very high. Okay. It's like one of the, when we changed the scout leaders course to the army reconnaissance course in 2009 through 10 with total back end of the two star general at Fort Knox. Now it's at Fort Benning. Uh, after we did all the first pilot courses, we surveyed the 32 instructors and I hate the word

Mike Jones (09:55)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (10:18)
32 facilitators. As you saw in my last document, I made sure that was the key word. And I'll get to that in a little bit. But I said, what you guys and gals think? And they said, you know what? When I drive into work today, and this is from an E7, Sergeant first class. When I drive into work today, I'm enjoying it because I'm part of something. You're entrusting me, empowering me to teach the way. Now I give you the outcome and I hold you responsible, just like Commander's intent.

And I teach people how to write that correctly too, or speak it. But my point is, it's hard for these people to release theirself from the way they made it. Because I call our society the resume society, where you've got to have this certification and these jobs, and as long as you don't mess it up. And then when you get to that point, say you're in the police force, you're a major, or a colonel, or a cap, police chief.

Mike Jones (11:03)
Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (11:14)
You know, you're supposed to be the stellar person. So it's kind of hard to let your subordinates speak their mind, which based on their experiences and learning, they may be giving the right answer, but you disagree with it. Am I helping you out there?

Mike Jones (11:28)
Yeah.

yeah, you brought some really good things, in that overview there where we talk about, being able to adapt to the changing environments, people actually having freedom of action, which in turn, you know, that's what people want. And we pay these people to do a job, but we constrain them so much that they can't actually do their job. So it's almost like, well, why have we got them? You know, if I want someone there just to do

exactly what I want them to do. I could get anyone to do that. But we train these people up, they're experienced. We try to utilise them, but we constrain them so much that they can't adapt and they get no enjoyment out of it.

Don Vandergriff (11:59)
Yeah, you're-

The, and you use a key word constraint. And what I try to do in my work is answer the, do we constrain? It's like the end of the last Substack article when I was talking about how we failed reform and trade doc from 2007 through 2012. We made, and you'll see in the next article, we actually made some really big inroads.

Mike Jones (12:19)
Mm.

Don Vandergriff (12:33)
But it goes back to why are we willing to constrain so much? And again, it goes back to ego and risk aversion,

or the phrase from Vietnam War, zero defects, which is paramount in my society, it really is.

Mike Jones (12:42)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

You see it a

lot in safety critical, like you talk about the EMS and the fire service. We see it over here in engineering or safety critical situations. They think that they can control risk. So by controlling risk, they try and centralize it. And by centralizing it, they realize they then create risk further across the system because people are turning up to the situation.

and they're not looking at the situation and thinking, well, you know, what am I here to achieve? And how can I achieve that aim as safely as possible? They're not thinking about that or the context. They're thinking about, okay, so what have I been told to do? Regardless of the context.

Don Vandergriff (13:33)
Yeah.

And, what's going to happen if I don't do this right. So, so the other reason that it's taken time now, I really think we've got the right people in the U S military starting to take charge. But it's like, I told you when we were on before the podcast happened, they're like captains of a ship, taking over a ship where the entire crew hates them. So a lot of my government.

Mike Jones (13:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mmm.

Don Vandergriff (14:02)
at the federal level, somewhat at the state level, depending on the state, they're dominated by culture of Marxist. And what is Marxism? Marxism is two things. It's about egos, power, well, three things, power, but at least to control because people think they can control everybody else. So this runs totally in conflict to a culture of Auftragstaktik which is really related. And I'm sure you have a similar

Mike Jones (14:22)
Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (14:29)
comment

The US Constitution is really the doc, I have my handbook here because my wife's getting on to me about what are you going to write next as a book. And the Constitution is really about mission command. This is what it, so the key to mission command is I'm empowering you as long as you accomplish my outcome at two levels higher. And in return, you can do it the way you want, but I'm going to hold you to that. Now, if you make a,

Mike Jones (14:41)
Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Don Vandergriff (14:56)
Honest mistake I hate honest mistake if you make a mistake in trying to do right thing But you can explain why you did it then that's acceptable But when you in the in the US Constitution is about we're gonna give you these rights In return go out and be a responsible person you can do what you want as long as you don't trample on somebody else's rights And also regardless of your status in society, you're gonna be held responsible

We've lost that. And we've seen it also in military. There's been guys who've written about a soldier can lose a weapon and gets tortured. Or a soldier says something online and gets tortured. with a senior person, they make a similar mistake at their level and nothing happens. Or they get a hand slap.

Mike Jones (15:23)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, I think you see that a lot where, you know, there's that disparity between different standards at different levels, which then totally erodes trust, which is trust is a key principle of mission command. But with that, brought up, yeah, yeah, and you've brought like really key point around honest mistake, because I think there's something, you know,

Don Vandergriff (15:56)
Thank you for bringing that up.

Mike Jones (16:05)
we can control our actions, but we can't necessarily understand how that's going to unfold in the external environment, the outcome. So we can do things and, you know, after action reviews are great, but I keep seeing an organization, they're not after action reviews. They're not thinking about their thinking and what information they had about them. They're focused on the outcome only and you can't change the outcome. And so I'd laugh and call them after outcome reviews, cause that's all they seem to be.

Don Vandergriff (16:31)
Yeah, what's really good is I spend all interwoven when I'm teaching about how to, because really the success of implementing mission command involves building trust. How do you build trust? Well, the leaders at the top got to set the example. Okay. They've got to be ethically and morally squared away and they've got to be able to, when they tell someone to do something,

the people know they've already done it or they're doing it with us. Okay, that's very important. The other thing is you've got to develop people different than the way you do for a hierarch or industrial age command, top down command. You've got to do it totally different. And that's one of my earlier points I meant to finish. Cause I go on all kinds of tangents here is

Mike Jones (17:08)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (17:19)
When you've been educated in the Rope method of memorization, Rope trained for the test, as I call it here, and then you've been told you're successful because you follow the process, you don't get in trouble, you're a perfect bureaucrat, and that's both leaders and managers because they're distinctly different. Both are needed, but in the system we have, being a manager is more important than being a leader.

The hard thing for them to do when I talk about how are going to develop your people to do mission command? All they can fall back on is, well, what have I done since I was in kindergarten? And that's a whole other subject, how ironic that is. Because the Prussian officers under Moltke called the new education, the learning method, kindergarten tactics. Because what is kindergarten?

Mike Jones (18:07)
Did they?

Don Vandergriff (18:08)
Yeah, when it was invented by the Swiss educator, his name escapes me, but it was in the 1700s kindergarten. It was about giving people something and just playing with it and figuring it out. So when Moltke took what Clausewitz had written and evolved it into the German learning system for officers and then NCOs later,

It was all about, okay, we're going to give you this tactical problem and we're not going to have a recipe to solve it. Now there'll be baseline tasks, how to fire an artillery piece or how to do your individual tasks. That's unchangeable. But how you solve the problem is up to you. And then we're going to have you have to justify it in your own words. And by the way, you're going to be critiqued.

Mike Jones (18:47)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (18:58)
at all levels because it didn't, regardless if you were a cadet at one of the seven cadet schools throughout Germany and one of the core districts in Moltke time, because that evolved, or at the Craig's Academy or the Captain's Tactics course, it was all, the methodology was principle driven in that, okay, you present your course of action, you're gonna get critiqued, okay, and the critiques gotta be...

of substance not, was a great one or it was a bad one because I had to do that two weeks ago. there's no empty, there's no open-ended answers. Why are statements, why was it good in your own words? Why was it not good? And then, and then they have to justify what they did in their own words. And think about this Mike, you then you have, so you have superiors that have never been educated that way.

Mike Jones (19:37)
Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (19:50)
They were the one that could most memorize a test, learn how to say the right thing. They would do the reading on the doctrine, but they never questioned the doctrine. And now you have a learning system that's totally opposite of that. And the facilitator up there has to be what I call a Jedi knight. It's all about asking the right questions to drive the learning.

Mike Jones (20:06)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (20:15)
I tell my students if I do more than 20 % of the talking during whatever length of workshop, then I'm wrong. And I ask them at the final AR, did I meet that? And they normally say, yeah. Go ahead.

Mike Jones (20:24)
Yeah. But that's,

yeah, it's just a really crucial thing. Cause when we talk about mission command or we talk about culture of mission command, people straight away, think go into, it's just about process. It's just about, need these processes. We need these policies in. But really when we talk about mission command, we're talking about people that are actually thinking. We're not teaching them what to do. We're teaching them how to think.

and engendering that all the time. Because as soon as we start taking control as you see, we create learn helplessness. And then it comes to a point when you or me or anyone comes into an organization and says, do you know what? If you want to be able to execute, you want to execute quickly, you need mission command. And you try and put it in, but people are so, so,

used to being told exactly what to do when you're saying to them, right, this is the aim. This is what I want you to do. There are some minimum constraints that we need put in place. How you do that, you know, that's up to you. And they're looking and going, what do you mean? Well, I need more information. Well, no, no, you're in the context. I trust you. Go ahead and think about afterwards. You like you said, I'll ask good questions like, you know, how did that go? if you could do that differently, what would you looked at?

How did you come to those decisions? That's what I wanna know. I don't really care too much about the outcome at points. I wanna know about their thinking.

Don Vandergriff (21:55)
No, exactly. So throughout my workshops, and I'll delve more of this in future articles, that after action review is so critical to capping off the learning. And the main point in an outcomes-based learning workshop, I work for a great company called Nemertes We do the adaptive leader training. And part of that is teaching how to do the right AAR

Mike Jones (22:08)
Mmm.

Don Vandergriff (22:23)
is you're exactly right, you're breaking down how they made the decision so they can get better. Okay, yeah, so one of my first exercises is an exercise where I teach them about the commander's intent and what you just said, constraints. I call them parameters, translated from the German word. But the main thing is normally what I always see, and I've been through this myself,

Mike Jones (22:29)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (22:49)
when I was consulting the Marine Corps a few years back, where the chain of command was like, you're the mission command guy, go out and do it. said, well, what's my constraints and what's my outcome you want? OK. And so the first exercise is very simple. They have to solve, but I'm teaching them what an outcome is and then what you have to put your constraints, to use your words, which is all good. Because that's normally one or the other is not done.

Mike Jones (23:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (23:14)
Okay,

so and then you've got to understand the difference between commander intent and mission statement, is the statements is the direct task and the intent is what I just talked about. Okay, I'm gonna give you this task to do are several tasks, but here are here is what I want to see as a vision of success. I love the term as a smoke clears, but here's the strength.

Mike Jones (23:39)
Yeah, I do. I use that.

Don Vandergriff (23:41)
So in my simple numbers exercise, they can't talk. They've got to combine it after picking a number 1 to 9 into 17 with the 27 people. It's mathematically impossible to get all the groups into equal 17. And I give them the time limit of one minute. You can't talk. So I said, what are the constraints or the parameters? And they go, they lift them. I said, well, when you give your

intent to your subordinates, that's what you want to do. There's got to be, there's going to be constraints or limitations, whatever you want to use. So we do that and then we do the first AAR and I tell them I've written down two things I want to talk about in this AAR, but I'll show them at the AAR. Okay, because what do we normally see when we see AAR?

Mike Jones (24:30)
briefing points about stuff that went wrong.

Don Vandergriff (24:33)
Yeah, and usually it's done by the superior person. They get up there, what's wrong? And they do all the talking. And the best AARs I've ever seen is when the audience is supposed to learn and get better, tells you what they did wrong or tells you what they need to improve. That's what you want. Because when they admit it, it's going to happen. When I'm a sergeant major or colonel, because that's the people I generally see do this, and get up there and go, we did this wrong.

Mike Jones (24:36)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (25:00)
Or here's the worst one on AAR. Give me three good things you did and three bad things. That's the worst type. Okay.

Mike Jones (25:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

I think I've seen the evolution of AARs through my time in the military and so forth. And you see all these classic cliches, but I think you brought a really good point where actually just, I think it comes early to your bit about facilitator. I'm not there as a leader to stand up there and give just my perspective of what went wrong or what went well.

because I could tell someone all they want, but if I keep telling them, I don't know if it's actually going to be taken in or they're going to learn, they're going to be getting nothing out of it. So just stopping and asking them and drawing it from them. Cause at least I can see what's implicitly held in here. Cause once we start asking questions, they bring it out explicitly and I can start seeing the gaps from my perspective of the world and their perspective, you know, none are, you know, none's better than the other. It's just.

you know, we've just got differences that we see.

Don Vandergriff (26:00)
Nope, you're exactly right. But again, the majority, if not all AARs I've ever witnessed, are the big briefer saying what went wrong and what we've got to improve on. And don't let it happen again is the undertone. And in the learning environment, we've got to make failure acceptable as long as we can justify why we fail.

Mike Jones (26:11)
Mmm.

Yeah. Well, this is the thing, isn't it? Again, with AARs, they're only done when something's gone wrong. People don't do it think, do you know what? That went really well. Let's do an AAR to like learn from it. They don't, they just move on. Only when something goes wrong. And so people are in tune then to not learn. As you said, AARs are learning experience, but they're not learning because they're ready to put their helmet on and think, how can I get through this unscathed?

So when they're asked questions like, what's three things that went well for you, they're gonna give you the minimum thing just so they can get out of that experience. Because they're trying to think, how can I get through this?

Don Vandergriff (26:59)
You know why I'm laughing at you?

I'm laughing because I see this over and over and I take it very serious because it's but we have to we have to have some humor and see things with sarcasm because all these things behind my desk are notebooks briefed. I take tons of information. I narrow it down and then I put lessons learned and you see it over and over. I like you said you're

You're going to name the podcast Moltke or what were you talking about specific?

Mike Jones (27:29)
It's

strategy meets reality. So it's a play on Von Moltke talking about how no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Don Vandergriff (27:34)
He

is one of the greatest examples of realizing a culture was wrong and to change it to get the most power out of it. And he practices it himself. He's an incredible person. I mean, in all kind of ways. And unfortunately, with our society now, all you hear about over here is everyone's a Nazi if they're not a far left person.

Mike Jones (27:47)
Mmm.

Don Vandergriff (28:00)
And then when you say, Moltke was a Prussian, they go, why aren't they linked to Germans and Nazis? So he does not get the credit or the, I've got so much stuff on him. to the doctor. Have you talked to Dr. Goodman? Bruce Goodman? Please, I'll send you his email because one, he's a close friend. He has been incredible. He, he's the Moltke modern day Moltke today. He really is.

Mike Jones (28:00)
Yeah.

No, I haven't. I'll speak to him.

Yeah, it's

funny. Friends of mine always joke about, because I talk about Von Moltke a lot and Clausewitz and that is just like, do you ever not talk about Prussian generals? But, you know, there's so much history in the sense of you've got Sun Tzu, Clausewitz Von Moltke Boyd, you know, they were telling us all these things about

how we deal with complexity, how we deal with unpredictability, how we need to be adaptable. But we sort of forgotten all that stuff. We just sort of...

Don Vandergriff (29:00)
We don't forget it.

I don't mean to interrupt you. We don't forget it. We intentionally avoid it because it's uncomfortable.

Mike Jones (29:06)
Yeah, yeah, good point,

Don Vandergriff (29:08)
I

mean, I wish we would forget it. That would be at least a justifiable excuse. I'm sorry for interrupting, but like I said earlier, most of our people have been educated the wrong way. And that's something I've really got into. I point back to all my books and stuff. Dr. Robert Bork, who is the leading learning guy in the world, in my opinion, he's the dean of UCLA School of Psychology, has a great web page, the Learning Lab.

Mike Jones (29:13)
No, no.

Mmm.

Don Vandergriff (29:36)
But he gave a lecture one time, US Army trade-off in 2006, I was there. And it was incredible. It's like how we learn is exactly, how we learn today or teach today is exactly opposite of way we should learn. And all the things I've been talking about, I saw Moltke discovered himself. in that, I got to make the most adaptive. Germany has no other advantage because they're surrounded by everyone. We can make one big advantage, we can develop adaptive.

Mike Jones (29:49)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (30:04)
creative leaders that decide faster than our opponents. That's how we can win. And he proved it in 64, 66, and 1870. But really studying how he adapted, because he still had a lot of the old guard as senior officers in all three campaigns. And the way he dealt with it was exactly the way he was promoting it to be taught. He didn't all of sudden micromanage.

Mike Jones (30:10)
Yes.

Don Vandergriff (30:32)
He accepted some things in each of the three campaigns. And it's fascinating that, because most people, you we have some experts here that write like teams and teams by McChrystal. But then when I hear about McChrystal as a person, or some of the other, like the senior SEAL guys, they're micromanagers. Okay. So they reach all this great stuff, but Moltke

Mike Jones (30:45)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (30:57)
practice what he preached. was more and then if you look at the other thing about Moltke was we have the big jump now with AI and digital and satellite see all well they made the similar jump when he was leading with the railroads and the telegraph. There are dramatic changes to communications and mass movement and everything and Moltke fit a system that took advantage of both without

crushing their culture of Auftragstaktik. That's why I love studying the guy. And Bruce, so I spent partly thanks to Bruce, Lin, and my wife, who speaks some German, self-taught German over the last 30-something years. I'm still poor at it, but when Bruce gives me something like he passed on Rommel's other book, we all know about infantry attacks, but Rommel also published a book of decision.

tactical decision games from his experiences. But it's all in German. There's not a translation of it. I think I've restacked it. Yeah, I did restack it. So...

Mike Jones (31:57)
wow. wow.

cool. yeah I

think I saw that and there was yeah I saw that and it was YouTube videos talked about different options. Yes yeah.

Don Vandergriff (32:09)
Well, those multiple problems. Yeah. Those are available.

But the thing that Bruce sent out, I restacked was Rommel's other book, which was a book of decision games from his own experiences. So what you want to do with decision games. this, when we teach, we try to spend an equal amount of time with the students, regardless of their organization, developing their own centric games to what they do every day.

Mike Jones (32:19)
Okay.

Don Vandergriff (32:38)
So like if I did a two day workshop, which is the favorite one of everybody, they spend the afternoon in their homework in their teams develop and say, say they're here's a good example for you. We did the garrison of Fort Hood, thanks to Colonel Foster in 2021, 2021. And it was a two day workshop and it was 31 senior executives. Most of them retired colonels and sergeant majors, big egos.

rightly deserved, don't have a problem with it, they work their ass off to get where they're at. But what we did, the second day, there's six groups, it was all day, they get a full hour to present their game. They have to do a game centric to what they do every day, but using the methodology they learned in day one. So what was cool was about two months, this was in October, so in December they had this horrible ice storm at Fort Hood. Well, one of the games that the group made was

Mike Jones (33:08)
bit yeah

Don Vandergriff (33:37)
how to deal with an ice storm. was a TDG, a decision game, and the guy wrote me an email later after this happened in December and said, use that same, because when I got back to my office and we use a decision game with my subordinates to teach them and we went through this event. So going back to Moltke he was pushing for that.

Mike Jones (33:39)
Hmm.

Don Vandergriff (34:00)
The very first thing that Moltke did as Chief of Staff, not the very first thing, I don't know exactly what he did as official, but one of the first things he did was he saw the yearly big war game exercise, free play exercise, and you know how long the op order was for?

Mike Jones (34:17)
Yeah, hold on.

Don Vandergriff (34:18)
798 pages. So it was totally controlled, scripted. And he came in and said, we're getting away from that. We're going to, I want to start seeing more like, because he had the advantage. And another thing about him, he never commanded anything above the level of company. Now he was an advisor to the Turkish sultans, the German advisor and other things, but he

Mike Jones (34:20)
Wow.

Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (34:46)
He was probably always in positions to think and reflect, important word to reflect, learn from what he saw. And so I know Dr. Hughes has written a good deal on him and so does Bruce. But the point is, there's a guy that lived what he wanted everyone else to be able to do. And that you have to have that. And we have very few of that these days.

Mike Jones (35:05)
Yeah

Yeah. And I think again, it comes to that, like you said, that ego, that risk aversion. and, and I think, you know, along with our learning, way we've learned, I'm probably thankful that, I didn't do very well at school, so I didn't really learn anything from it. But maybe it's helped me, with this way of thinking. But the other part is, we still got the belief that the world is stable. The world is predictable.

And, know, if I do this, regardless of anything else, this will happen. Moltke didn't realize that didn't happen. And that's why, you know, that way of thinking around, well, we can't control everything. We don't need to control everything. We just need to give clear intent and enable people that are closest to the problem, freedom of action to adjust in line with the intent. And, we look at that and think, oh,

When I tell people about this, they're like, well, yeah, it sounds great. That's what we need to do. And I'm a firm believer in that mission command is the leading principle or philosophy to be able to execute effectively, bearing in mind that strategy execution statistics are pretty poor. think around 90 to 98 % of strategies never implemented. A large point of that is to do with execution.

Something then doesn't correlate from understanding to action. Trying to get leaders to do it, to apply it. Even just, even like you said, have games and just in a safe area to try and just practice it. They just get just caught up in the day to day and they never change their behavior.

Don Vandergriff (36:44)
And the most neglected

part is what we've been largely talking about over the last 40 minutes is they don't take the time to develop their subordinates, which should be an ongoing thing, but it doesn't happen. They want to do a formal, you and I have dealt with a lot, but they want to do a formal two day, three day conference somewhere and you know, at a nice place and there's value in that getting to know people and sharing ideals and having a break, go somewhere different. I'm not saying it's a bad thing.

Mike Jones (36:55)
Mmm.

Don Vandergriff (37:13)
But everyone thinks that's like I was telling the group two weeks ago, there's this police staff sergeant in Baltimore police when I consulted them and that someone in the Baltimore paper wrote an article about this guy took the stuff from our workshops and every week that he gets a half four hour day with his squad. Okay. Which are part of a shift in the police language and he started doing this stuff.

and was talking about it. But one of things these guys did was they did a TDG on pulling over a person that had diplomatic immunity. What would happen? They did a TDG on that.

I he calls me and says, you made me look good. I says, you made yourself look good. I said, happened, sir? And he said,

One of my officers pulled over an ambassador or some high level diplomat here in Baltimore and they were totally drunk and he knew how to handle it. When they did the TDG, they were all telling me, we never talk about this because we think it's not going to happen. That's what his point was. So they spent, and I was doing their workshop when they did this TDG, the one they were supposed to make centric.

Mike Jones (38:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (38:27)
And they were going on for 40 minutes talking about it. Guess what? I'm letting them go. Why? Because they developed a real world problem to solve, but they had never talked about it, which happens everywhere. Like you said about strategy never gets executed. And then they actually a week later, this one policeman and part of that group did it and he handled it perfectly. Well, it was close to perfect in the real world, but he handled it well. And when he was interviewed,

Mike Jones (38:39)
Mmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (38:55)
He said, why? And that's why the chief, Burchard, called me because he was like, it was great. So it goes back. People think when you do learning, it's got to be formal and it's got to be gated off. And I said, okay, guys, how long did it take us to do this TDG, this lap two weeks ago? And they said, it took about 45 minutes with the AAR. Okay. How hard would that be? So what was cool was an EMS captain who

Mike Jones (39:19)
Yay.

Don Vandergriff (39:23)
has about 30 people. And then a SWAT guy down there county south of here, he's a former Marine sniper, but he's got, he's the SWAT chief as a captain. He says, you know what? I can take this during a week and we can integrate this one or two times. I said, there's, there's a development right there. Because I told him the example, my cadets would end up at Georgetown and at West Point. They'd end up doing 50 of these things in a school year, 50.

Think about the learning curve there.

Mike Jones (39:50)
Well,

yeah, and it is, it's challenging for those situations. You know, you can't predict every situation, your, know, as Boyd talks about, you're getting the orientation close to reality as possible, and that's what we want, that helps them. But to point around the time that we have, I see...

I see people going, oh, Mike, I want a team day. And I'm like, I'm not your person. I'm not here to throw tennis balls or, you know, make bloody marshmallow towers, all that useless stuff or, yeah, or they just get a team away and all they do is go for the risk register. You're like, well, you're not getting any value of this. Like even the basic, like you could do a thing where you get people to share their perspective around the context we're in, you know, what's the situation? How is it affecting us?

Don Vandergriff (40:21)
No, they do that. It's funny.

Mike Jones (40:41)
What risks we see, what are the internal and external factors that are the biggest issues for us right now? And at least having that discussion and seeing those perspectives, that's more useful than trustfuls.

Don Vandergriff (40:53)
Well, no, that's that we're making, which is good. We're we're both believe in this. We both see it from similar directions. Our perspectives that are similar supporting efforts. that, like I said, I see the same thing all the time. I mean, you get again, all general so and so is going to be our keynote speaker or doctor. So and so the 30 books is going to be our keynote. And there is some value to lecture. OK, but.

It's not what they make it out to be. go in and if I do get invited to a conference like I did in September, and I start off with a game, a problem solving game. And guess what the results are? They're like, I wish everyone wanted to do that. Because one, I involved everybody. And then they realized that my ego wasn't in the way. Because I try to tell people, if they want to read about me, that's fine. But it's not about that. It's about them. OK?

Mike Jones (41:39)
Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (41:48)
And so I try to do like Moltke practice. Bruce is like that too. Bruce is, he's got a PhD from Oxford. You know, that never comes up and he did it to make himself better. He got a masters from Glasgow university as an American and he went to Yale university. So the guy has incredible academic credentials and he speaks fluent German and French, but in his books have won awards, but he never, it's not about, he wants, he wants to be the best teacher he can be our facilitator to make people better.

Mike Jones (41:57)
Nice.

Don Vandergriff (42:18)
And here's the funny thing about how bureaucratic our system is. So he applied, he started the School of Advanced Warfare for the Marine Corps. know what that is? SAW.

Mike Jones (42:18)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (42:31)
The second year of the Command and Staff College. was supposed to be, when Bruce created it, was the Kriegs Academy, American version. Bruce created that as a captain, because he was in Marine Corps. He retired as a major like I did, because he refused to play the game. Well, Bruce, four years ago, we have lunch all the time. Four years ago, when I was consulting him, we would go for long walks. He applied to go back there and be one of professors.

Mike Jones (42:40)
well, okay, yeah, yeah.

Wow.

You

Don Vandergriff (43:01)
They turned him down. And the reason is, is because he doesn't conform to their process and what they do. He refuses, he does it the way he knows is right, because that's why he's built that mountain of knowledge. And when it's not, he's not going to accept it. So here's the guy that was the founder of this course. And then him and I both applied at the new Marine Corps Wargaming Center. And we both got turned down.

Mike Jones (43:03)
cool.

Mmm.

Don Vandergriff (43:27)
And we know why they are hiring people to come in that are technology people and also people that will tell them what they want to hear. So what war games should do is create more questions than the answers. That sounds odd, it should. Guderian talked about after the France fell in 1940, he was interviewed for Spichtem in one of the papers. And he said, oh, the miracle on on the muse. That's what the reporter said. said,

Mike Jones (43:40)
Yes.

Don Vandergriff (43:56)
No, it wasn't. We had done 21 more games from the fall of Poland until May 8th or a days before the LD line of departure. And he said, we continually ask questions from the results that we had to go out and solve and prepare us for that. There's your miracle right there. Okay.

Mike Jones (44:13)
Yeah,

this is the thing with, you you write with technology and AI and all this stuff. It's what I'm seeing increasingly is people wanting them to give them the answer, which what we're seeing, we were talking about earlier about, leading these people, people are so used to just being told the answer. And now we want machines to tell us the answer, but not realizing that, it's this, it's this question, it's learning, it's challenges, getting people to...

Don Vandergriff (44:33)
Yep. Yep.

Mike Jones (44:41)
not what to think, how to think, that's going to help them navigate the changing environment that they're going to be faced with. Otherwise, as soon as the context changes, they're not going to know what to do.

Don Vandergriff (44:48)
Everyone

Yeah.

You're exactly right. It happens all the time. But every time I do a problem, the most obvious question is, could we have more time? They want more time. Because they want, and I'm like, if I gave you more time, what would happen? Because I teach them how using time in these problems actually creates a rapid discussion. So a rapid answer is, they can discuss it. OK. And I would tell them, even if I gave you 20 minutes on the one minute problem,

Mike Jones (45:01)
Mmm.

Don Vandergriff (45:19)
Would you even do it better? Probably not. So it's a constraint, but it goes back to what you and I are talking about. They're not being, the brain is like any other muscle. It's gotta be challenged. When we work out hard, we wanna challenge our muscles to rebuild them and build them stronger. the brain's the same way. But when you make it easy by giving them all the answers, like our public school system under G.W. Bush,

Mike Jones (45:22)
Yeah, no.

Don Vandergriff (45:46)
Wanted to make everything level and so they trained to the test, state required state test. That's why our scores in reading and writing and arithmetic are so low because people are not challenged how to think.

Mike Jones (45:55)
Yeah.

No, that timing is a key thing because it's one thing we don't really have control of because we need to make a decision because these things are happening. And I had an incident recently with someone, we were making choices around strategy and we came to this decision really quickly. And I said, yeah, but if I gave you, if we spent another two hours on this, would you actually come up with anything different? And it probably won't.

Don Vandergriff (46:20)
Exactly.

But what's cool is when you give them a crush time, even the students start realizing where students can be anybody. They go, wow, we had to make a decision and it created a lot of discussion about it. I said, that's exactly. It's called peer-to-peer learning. That's another thing we overlook is I get these audiences that have incredible wealth of experience. And if they get the standard course, boy,

Mike Jones (46:36)
Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (46:48)
Boyd stuff is the really funny one where I've seen about 31 different Boyd use courses outside Chet and they all do the same thing. They lecture the little chart, know, the wire chart. I actually think some Moltke and Bruce and Bill Lynn and other people. I've learned how

Mike Jones (47:01)
Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (47:07)
releasing that ego and letting people learn and discuss and get better. That's what we gotta do and it's very rarely done.

Mike Jones (47:12)
Yeah.

And a lot of that as well is with you want leaders to make a decision so they can tell you timely decision making so that that enables the next level down to understand what needs to do. But something that Clausewitz brought up as a friction, he called it limited knowledge, which is still sort of true, but I think it's slightly different nowadays because especially after COVID, it's almost like Microsoft has thrown up in

people's offices. Now we've got power BI boards for everything. we've got, and now we've got AI, all this other stuff. And it's all it is, is just amplifying information that leaders so much information that they are information rich, insight poor. So they can't actually discern. Yeah. They can't discern what they want.

Don Vandergriff (47:57)
Yeah, that's a great one. That's a good, that's a good word. Yeah.

So in all my problems, and again, I learned this from those guys I just mentioned, and I just made them better, is when I give these scenarios out and the information, I always leave out key information. Cause another thing I teach people is how to ask questions. They're afraid to ask questions. And they tell me why, because their leaders take it as an insult to ask questions. I said it.

Mike Jones (48:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (48:25)
I want my people to ask questions because we're thinking as a team, I might miss some. So I deliberately do that and they learn how to ask our good and bad questions. So I teach that too. And, I got that from what Moltke was encouraging at the cadet level. that's where, so the way we do it adverse to the way we should learn is we start with all the required process tasks focused at the cadet level when we should in fact teach them how to critically think. Cause they're already corrupted by our learning institutions.

Mike Jones (48:51)
Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (48:54)
our public schools. So we've got to first teach them how to think and then we can teach them how to do key tasks at their unit or at their place of employment. But we do it the opposite. We focus on the process like, the baseline. I can tell you some great stories, Mike, about going to Sergeant Majors Academy. I never use PowerPoint. I have charts and whiteboard. And I ask all these Sergeant majors, so give me the three most important

Mike Jones (49:09)
Mm.

Don Vandergriff (49:21)
Baseline tasks. What's the baseline and? First it's a joke there and irony. It's like so lady three not one and it's like physical fitness drill and ceremony I says really and Then I come up with some historical example that's critical thinking how to think but they think the baseline has to be The learning the mass discipline versus the self discipline That's very

Mike Jones (49:29)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

And that's what we want in this. And you're only really going to get through this when people, you get people to start to think and you know that asking questions and they're not, you're not asking stupid questions. They're they're asked, they're fighting for information. it's, and, trying to, one thing I've always found interested is when you give someone an intent and you get them to analyze that intent, go, well, what?

What are they trying to achieve? What are they meaning by this? And it's trying to get people to understand what's implied and what's explicit. They've not said it, well, it's thinking about, they want me to do this. So for me to do this, even though they've not been explicit in this, I must achieve these things. And they won't do it because it's almost like, unless it's, you know, paint by numbers, I can't do anything.

Don Vandergriff (50:30)
Yep, you're right, you're exactly right. And what's sad is I've got it all laid out in my book.

got it all laid out here in my book Adopt It. Everything we just talked about is laid out in there. Okay and here's what's cool.

Mike Jones (50:40)
Yes.

I've

got my copy here, brother. It's not signed though, I'm just gonna say that.

Don Vandergriff (50:45)
Awesome, thank you. Taiwanese...

I've got to do it because we will meet someday. The Taiwanese did a better version just recently for their leaders. And the Ukrainians are using it too. I gave them permission because I'm always giving back.

Mike Jones (50:52)
Yeah, definitely.

Wow.

This

Yeah, yeah. there's something when we spoke about, when we last spoke a few months back, there's a really good point. It's giving people the confidence to understand when to do something different to what they've been told.

Don Vandergriff (51:18)
That's what I love, another reason about the best problem-solving games are, as Moltke said, no plan survives first contact. beyond, and planning is still good, it's still necessary, okay? Because you set up framework and unifying effort by the team. But what Moltke wanted to do, he created a bunch of decision games, was the person at the front, what you were told and what the enemy's doing is not what you plan to do. So what are you gonna do?

Mike Jones (51:26)
Mm.

Of

Don Vandergriff (51:45)
And I do those type of problem solving games and man, people got, it's like a breath of fresh air that they're actually, even though it's simulation, they're actually getting to do this. Because they're all, they all tell me, well, if it wasn't as planned or what we were told by our boss to do, then we're gonna wait for more guidance or we'll call up. I mean everywhere, it's sad, it really is. But what I've discovered is you can,

Mike Jones (52:08)
Yeah, yeah.

Don Vandergriff (52:13)
you can develop development systems, the outcomes-based learning methodology that allows people not only to do this formally, but do it informally, even among a team of two people.

Mike Jones (52:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's where, I go into organisations and they're like, Mike, we just want people to have initiative. We want people to have initiative. And I'm like, how, how are they going to have initiative when you're not clear on what you want? The aim's not clear. They've, you've constrained them so much that they've got no freedom of action. And they don't even, you don't even share what, what I like to call the in order too.

Like we're trying to do this in order to achieve this. know, without those fundamentals, can't have the initiative because they haven't got the information and no way of using that information to take the initiative. And often you see organizations spend loads of money on initiatives to gather engagement and to build the spirit of the organization. Well, I keep saying, and I'm firm on this, that if you can apply mission command

philosophy into your organization, you will see engagement, like you saying about those, that EMS that, you know, they enjoyed going to work because they're going to have agency. They're actually going to be challenged and stretched and get some enjoyment from that. They're going to have trust in the leader in the organization, which is often missing. And they are going to get variety because they got the variety by the fact that they

they've got the freedom to adapt to what they need to do. I don't know if you see that.

Don Vandergriff (53:51)
I see everything we've talked about is similar to what we both see similar things. It's amazing. They favor the tangibles over the intangibles. The tangibles are like you said, the little fun games without really tying that to learning. Like the opening game I do, I go ask, they, hey, why do we do this? And there's always, it's an icebreaker. I said, there's no such thing as an icebreaker in OBL.

Mike Jones (53:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (54:16)
Then I go, what's the purpose of this exercise? And they start answering their own questions. But what I really did is I used 15 minutes to show them how to understand intent. And that's the other purpose, that they could turn anything into a problem solving game.

Mike Jones (54:20)
Mm.

Mmm.

Yeah. And even when you see leaders and they're going, well, what are you trying to achieve? And they go, well, I need to achieve this and need to achieve this. And they're just, they're just a list of tasks. And when you actually say to them, but forget the task, what's the outcome you're trying to, by achieving these tasks, to your phrase earlier, which I love and I use also, is when the smoke clears, you've done all those tasks. What are you wanting to see meaningfully different? What's the outcome that you're trying to produce?

And that gets them a different frame of mind on how they actually communicate and what outcome they want, which then enables people to understand that we could do these tasks in various different ways as long as it achieves the outcome.

Don Vandergriff (55:11)
I saw a statement the other day from one of the training sessions. When everyone's training as a leader, your organization is untouchable. And then I went to how they train the leader and they get a big lecture.

Mike Jones (55:19)
Mmm.

Of course.

Don Vandergriff (55:23)
You so I mean,

you've got, you've got to create what we call a fail safe environment where you can fail and learn from it. And I was trying to teach the Marines that a few years ago when I consulted training education command, that was hard for them to accept. You know, yeah, you don't want failure in combat, but you're going to get failure in combat too. How did you overcome it when you did realize you failed? How did you learn from it? But if you don't do it in your learning environment,

Mike Jones (55:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Don Vandergriff (55:50)
in your so-called peacetime garrison, you're not going to do it when you go to combat.

Mike Jones (55:55)
No, but it's counterintuitive because I guarantee if you try to control everything, you are going to get more failure. It's just like, we know it from system thinking and complexity theory that the more that you try to control risk, the more risk that you create across the system. But I think it's just trying to get people to realize that and to release control, which I think we're both advocates of.

Thank you so much for coming, But if you could leave lead as one thing to think about from this podcast, what would it be?

Don Vandergriff (56:24)
forward to it.

that development of your subordinates doesn't have to be formal. You can create any opportunity to develop and make them better, as long as you use the methodology I talked about. OK. I create the problem. What's the outcome you want to achieve, the learning outcome? And then, hey, I can do this in an hour. I see people sitting around right here. And let's do this. Or you delegate that to one of your subordinates. I want you to create.

Mike Jones (56:34)
Mm.

Don Vandergriff (56:58)
You know, we call it here, hip pocket training, but create a TDG that you think we need to work on a problem with a TDG and have it ready to go when I call on you. That's even the better way to do it. training does not have training. Learning does not have to be formal. Okay. Our scripted I in a, a, in I've allotted four hours of doing that. No, it's opera. It's what I call opportunity development. Okay. Have that ready.

Mike Jones (57:10)
Yeah, yeah.

No.

Mm.

Don Vandergriff (57:28)
That's what I want to leave with people. Because if they do that, then they're going to start, man, because this is ongoing. never stops. The development of your people with the Prussian system, they started with fairly simple problems, and they continually got more complex.

Mike Jones (57:44)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I like that.

Don Vandergriff (57:45)
So

that's how organizations have to be. If they do that, they'll get better, they really will.

Mike Jones (57:51)
Yeah, definitely they start creating the thinking person. They're only going to, you know, reap the benefits. And I think that pushing that to the, well, not centralizing that and pushing it out and getting people involved, I think is only going to be a winner. know, Don, thank you very much. Always a pleasure to have you and to speak about Von Moltke and Clausewitz and all the good stuff. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Don Vandergriff (58:11)
And I wish you

continued luck because like I do, we had the best of two worlds. We can help make a living at this, but we can also make people better. you can't ask for a better situation.

Mike Jones (58:22)
No, no, we're privileged in that way and I think it's great. So thank you so much for coming, it's been awesome. Take care.

Don Vandergriff (58:30)
Okay,