What Problem Does This Solve

All right, Greg. So for today's conversation, we've got a good one. And it's around the central theme of what problem does this solve? And that question alone is a very simple thought experiment, a thought exercise, that you can use in a lot of situations. And we're going to get into that, but I'll give some background on this.

And just in general, we've talked about this kind of before in general, like what we provide is a "think" with a K, not a "thing" with a G. But we'll get into why this kind of keeps happening over and over again in a number of different areas. And so the idea is a lot of organizations will often invest in tools to fix problems where the problem is actually fundamentally about training, judgment, decision-making. We assign a technology to that. And that's kind of like throughout human history, we've always come up with technological solutions to problems. That's not generally the issue, but the issue is it kind of becomes the wrong solution.

And so we're going to talk today about why we have that tendency, and why not only is it ineffective, but it can be very often dangerous. And so, you know, me, when I do watch TV, I usually watch some documentary. Yeah. Well, unless my wife... you're not watching Golden Girls. And then we're watching Real Housewives of Whatever, which I can't stand, but I also find it extremely informative and very, very insightful into pop culture and society as a whole. But that's a different episode.

So today, the other one I watched was on the Boeing 737 Max. And so there were all these problems with it, right? Boeing's 737 Max was developed to compete with rival competitor Airbus's more fuel-efficient, larger plane. So rather than designing a new airframe from scratch, having to go through that whole process, massive investment, all kinds of stuff you have to do, what they did was they took their existing 737 platform and added larger engines.

Now, the key reason why they did this was because pilots who were currently rated and certified to fly the 737 would not have to go through any recertification process. It wouldn't be something long, meaning it could be adopted very quickly. Everyone liked this, like, "Hey, this gives us this new capability. Everyone still has the requirements to continue to fly the plane, so we don't have to change anything. Wow, this is a great solution." And look at what it's going to do for our bottom line. You know, that it's basically the same plane. So that was kind of the concept behind it.

But the problem with this new design of adding these larger engines is that the placement of the engines caused the aircraft's nose to pitch upward under certain flight conditions. Now, I'm not a pilot, but that's not always a good thing if your nose starts to pitch upward. And so because of this design issue, they said, "Okay, we're going to counteract that and we're going to create a technological fix."

And so they said, rather than again spending the time and the money and the resources, pulling pilots offline and getting them trained up — "Hey, this is what happens, but you can counteract that" — what they did was they just implemented this new system called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System). So the idea was the MCAS automatically pushed the nose of the plane down if it detected that the aircraft was climbing too steeply.

Now, once again, Greg, I am not a pilot, but I think for a significant amount of the time that you're flying, you don't want the nose of the plane to be pushed downward during your flight.

I'm not going to sit here and believe that Boeing made a mistake, okay? So if you're trying to get me to... I'm just saying that's a little hard to swallow. So, yeah. Well, I don't want to get... I like my life. I like being above ground. I don't want to get taken out by some Boeing team.

No, but here's the thing: Boeing didn't train pilots on the existence of this MCAS system. And a lot of the pilots, they found out after the investigation, were unaware that it was even on their aircraft. So they're flying this plane thinking, "Okay, yeah, it's the same plane. Newer, bigger engines, whatever." They didn't even know that there's this thing in there that might push the nose of the plane down.

So it also relied on a single sensor, and if that sensor failed, this system, again, that pushes the nose of the plane down, could activate incorrectly. So from this, two fatal crashes, Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, occurred after this MCAS forced the nose of the plane down repeatedly. Flight crews obviously had no idea what was happening. Therefore, they had no idea how to correct it.

So people said, "Oh, it must have been pilot error." It's like, "Well, no, it's not my fault if I don't know what's going on. I can't diagnose the problem, and let alone, even if I did diagnose the problem, know how to solve it, because no one trained me, right?" So the core failure: obviously, Boeing tried to solve a design challenge with automation and software. They failed to invest in training in the human beings who would be responsible for managing that automation. They relied on the tech instead of investing in decision support, orientation, crew readiness, situational awareness — those kind of things.

So basically, Boeing gave these pilots a new capability without giving them the cognitive framework to manage it. So, it's like, "Here's this new thing, go out and you'll be fine." Well, that's not how that stuff works. And so, the end result of this one: 346 lives lost, worldwide grounding of the entire 737 Max fleet. Boeing, I believe, lost over $20 billion in cost and legal claims. It's probably even higher than that. And then years of reputation damage in aviation safety, which then compiles anytime you have any other problem, right? That becomes the issue.

So, like I said, the big central theme of what we're talking about today is just, "What problem does this solve?" That's the central question of today's podcast and today's discussion. And it's a very simple thought experiment when coming up with any new solution, anything. It's like, "Well, what problem?" We often come up with solutions to problems that don't exist sometimes. And when it comes down to these types of decisions, most resource decisions are made reactively, not strategically.

So the idea is, "Okay, something went wrong. Let's buy something to fix it." "Okay, people say they don't feel confident or something's going on. Well, let's buy some gear, right?" Rather than investing in our people, let's go invest in a product, a system, an app, and then just let our people figure it out. So you have to address some questions, right? "Is this fix addressing a root cause or just a symptom? Are we solving for performance or just for optics?" And tools, I've also seen — we'll get into this — tools are often used as shortcuts for difficult conversations, or they're used in place of having a difficult conversation. And so really, the gear becomes a pacifier, not really a solution.

So that's kind of big picture, Greg. And I know you have some other examples there, but I'll stop and let you jump in here as well.

Thanks. So, first, I didn't want to have this discussion based on the title. So, when I first read, "What problem does this solve?" The first thing I got is a ponytailed, "Friday shirt"-wearing guy in the board meeting that's leaning back and asking that question with his arms above his head, with his fingers interlaced. Right. And then the second image I got, that's the guy. No, no, no. But that's the guy trying to sound smart, not actually. Exactly. Question, right? That's what I'm trying to describe. The scientific term is "douchebag." The same douchebag has inside of his coat pocket — his wool coat pocket — a laminated card, and this follow-up question is, "How do we scale this?" And he has no idea that either of those questions are "douchebag 101," that they're just to make it look like he's paying attention and involved in it.

Then I started reading into it, and when I got to the 737, I couldn't believe the numbers. And I couldn't believe it was Boeing, but then you wrote something, and it really stuck. It really resonated. And you wrote, "Most resource decisions are made reactively, not strategically." And we have a bunch of police officers and law enforcement, corrections, courts that listen to the show or that we know personally. And I would say just change out Brian's sentence just a little: "Most resource decisions are made reactively, not strategically."

Now, let's take that same sentence to the dojo floor. Now, let's take it slide-stopping up to a police call where shots have been fired and somebody's down, and maybe an officer is down. Now, let's take it out to the training that we're doing on the shooting range. If we're making our decisions reactively and we're not implementing or inputting the new and incoming information strategically, then we're going to slide directionally directly towards the problem at full speed with no further chance of solving it than we had when we were on the outer ring, circling the drain, looking at the problem. And what do I mean by that? I mean that you have to understand that if we don't create a cognitive framework for problems, then we're never going to solve it.

And Brian, you said, "Are we solving for performance or just for optics?" Do you remember during this, a couple of years ago, within the last five years, where police agencies... "Oh, man, you can't have an American flag on your police uniform." Okay, that's going to piss some people off. And then we went the other way. "Well, you don't want to have shined black boots because that brings in the militant." What we were doing, Brian, is on a whim, or on one written complaint, or on hearing somebody say, "Man, that certainly seems like it's a point of agitation." We were changing policy, and it's the same answer over and over and over: "What thought did we put behind this before we decided to go forward and fix it?"

Right. And you bring up, kind of reinforcing the point that a tool can be, when I said, "Tools are often used as shortcuts for difficult conversations." So rather than having a difficult conversation, we wanted to point to the flag or the boots and say, "That's the problem." It's like, "Well, that's clearly not the issue." Like, what does someone's shoe have to really do with the situation? Or is that symbolizing something larger that alludes to the problem that you're actually getting at, but you don't know how to articulate it? So, you can point, but I can point to that. I can point to that thing. You know what I mean? So I say, "Well, that's got to be it. It's the red hat you're wearing." And it's like, "Well, okay. No, it's not. That's a symbol of something that you don't like."

So I know you had a good example that spurred a memory, a motion link, for me. Oh yeah. And I'd love you to bring that up too. So I lived through something that most Americans have long forgotten, and let me be the historical record. So, the Civil War, the Civil War being the musket man. So, there was a thing that came out while I was a "copper" (police officer) called anti-lock braking. And they called it ABS. And we had a fleet full of Chevs, and then we had the other big "gosh-darn" boats that I can't think of the name of them, that were out there as the mark police cars. And all of them, because they were fleet vehicles, all came straight from General Motors with the ABS on it.

Now, there wasn't a warning. There wasn't, "By the way, we changed all the systems that we told you about before." They were just on there. And the idea behind it was sound, because it was supposed to allow a driver to maintain steering control and shorten stopping distance. And specifically for emergency situations like slippery surfaces, gravel roads, those type of things where if your wheels would lock up, you're going to skid and lose control. The only problem, without telling us about it and without the additional training, (on) Caprice Classic and the other one I still can't think of, they put them on the fleet vehicles and said, "Hey, let the 'gosh-darn' accidents begin."

So, what happened is that when you pressed down on it, the first thing that came back was a pulse. The pedal would actually push back towards you, and it was a rhythmic pattern like "boop boop boop." And then when it did that, it made a clunking sound in the firewall: "clunk clunk clunk." And so you thought something failed and you thought, "Holy [expletive], the car is falling apart, and you weren't stopping." Well, you were stopping. You were slowing speed and lessening the inertia, but with the brake pushing back on you and that noise, you thought you had a systems failure. So, people were just sliding through intersections and ramming the car in front of them and oversteering. Oh my god. I could tell you the story.

And we were in, "gosh darn," what's the name of that little city at 8 Mile and Kelly? Harper Woods, maybe. And at the end of a long pursuit in a dangerous situation, with shooting during and after the pursuit, and Rick Buley came up because we called for another car, and the locals were on the scene. And Rick Buley had the brand new sled on the fleet, and he was pressing it and threw up his hands to tell us, "I'm coming," and went sliding right through the crime scene and almost killed all of us and took out a light pole. And so we went back to the administration. I mean, this all happened in a weekend, Brian, and we're going like, "What the hell happened to our scout cars?" And all of a sudden, our supervisors came back — General Motors was literally across the street — and said, "Oh, it's the ABS." So, we nicknamed them the "anti-T" brakes because nobody could figure it out.

Now, Brian, with a short amount of time, and with all the complaints that we had and all the dangers that happened, it evolved significantly because we were speaking directly to the people that were putting them on the cars, and they were going, "Oh, wow. What a great test case." But I would ask you this: "Wouldn't it have been great to try a UX experiment just for the hell of it and say, 'Hey, let's put some people out in the parking lot with like, cones and water bags and stuff.'" And Brian, that never occurred. And Boeing's gonna get on and say, "Oh, yeah, we did all this." Brian, it never occurred.

Well, yeah, they... no, they... I'm sure they tested it, but there was no sharing of what that would be.

No, and that was the thing, because you mentioned that, and I was like, "Oh my god, I still remember when I was 16 years old, so I hadn't been driving legally for that long, right?" And so I had to lock up the brakes. Same thing. Someone cut me off and they jumped out into traffic, and I remember just slamming on the brakes. And at that point, I know the ABS had changed a little bit, but it was like this really rapid feeling under your foot, which is really weird. And then what did it automatically cause me to do was, "Oh my god, there's something wrong!" And then I lift my foot up, and then I have to put it back down. So the idea was that the ABS is there, it works. You stop faster, because rather than locking up the brakes and sliding through, you actually will stop faster. It's been proven to show that's a better system, but the first time you experience that, you're like, "Oh my." Again, it's so counter to anything you've experienced so far that it's completely foreign. And so, until you have that experience, unless you have it, it was just... I still remember exactly what intersection I was at, too, because I almost clipped the person.

Two completely different age groups. Brian is much older than I am. Two different things that we like. Brian's a clog fanatic, and I certainly hate clog dancing. And we could go down and say the Mercury Grand Marquis is... that it might be. And what happened is, we both came up with the same experience. So to me that's significant, Brian. And if we look at another airline thing, one of the things that we talk about in class is that when you think that your engine is stalled, what do we do? Intuitively, we know that what we need to do is bring the nose down to gain thrust, lift, to get the engines going again. And what do we do, though? We pull up because we're afraid of the ground. So, your natural reaction on the ABS was to fight the ABS, which was actually doing the work for you. But guess what? If we don't have a mental component and we don't have a training component, then it's going to be like "gosh-darn" Martian arithmetic. No, the Crown Victoria was the other one that had it. Yeah.

So, this is, it's always interesting to me why tools are the default. And so it's really important to understand how much it affects us as humans. Obviously, we're primed for technological advancement. That's how the human race has stayed alive. We've had to adapt to some situation to make it easier for the purposes of survival. I mean, it's just ingrained in our DNA. But tools often become this default for a number of fairly simple reasons.

One: tangible ROI, right? I get a return on investment. It's easier to budget. It's easier to understand the cost and what I'm going to get back from that. It's much easier to show off, "Hey, look at this thing. Look at what we bought," versus, "Well, look at this new capability to our people, or look at how they think now." So, it's very, very easy just to point to it and say, "There's the camera. There's the metal detector. There's this. We have this thing now. This thing is going to save us. This thing's going to help us. We can rely on it. It's effective. It's been tested. It's been engineered." And most of the time, (it's) really good and does exactly what it's supposed to do. I mean, I'm not bashing the tool or the technology itself. I'm bashing how we use and how we interact with it.

And so it's easier to point at something, and then just because as humans we have that simplicity bias, we gravitate towards solutions that are easier to understand and implement. It's easier to equip a person than to train one. If I take some random person off the street and I go, "Okay, what is this person capable of?" But then I put you in a uniform, and I put gear on you, and I give you a weapon system, and I give you all this stuff. Well, suddenly, "Okay, well, this person, yeah, they've got all the tools they need." It's like giving someone, "Hey, here's your garage completely built out for everything a carpenter would ever need." "Wow, this is awesome." It's like, "Do you have any training in being a carpenter, cutting wood, or anything?" "No." It's like, "Well, that's all useless then." I mean, that part comes first. And so, I'm not trying to oversimplify that. It really is that simple sometimes.

And you know, as you know, with any organization, it's political safety, right? I can say, and which I would go one step further with political safety and say, "It just makes us feel better, right?" If I get better gear, right? One, it's a better soundbite. It's a better headline. It's not going to cause friction with people or unions or culture or accountability. It's like, "Look, I did everything I could. I got my people the best gear out there." It's like, "Okay." And we pat each other on the back for that, but sometimes it's just done to make us feel better.

And a big one, there's less accountability with that. Meaning, there's sort of this "I can avoid being introspective and really digging in deep" because tools don't challenge leadership decisions. They just don't. Tools aren't going to talk back to you. They're not going to say, "Hey, this is so messed up, or we're being used incorrectly." The tool is just going to do exactly what it was designed to do. And so there's no feedback loop. There's no feedback mechanism. Well, training does that. Training actually says, "Oh [expletive], are we doing this right? Is this the right thing to do at this time?"

Right. Now you're going through the steps of doing it. Exactly. It'll magnify it. It'll shine a light on it. So, to that end, you brought up a couple of great buckets there, Brian. And so if we talk about ROI, simplicity, political safety, and introspection, if we just have those to throw some darts at... You know, Nico's a lieutenant on the fire department, so very proud of my son, Nico. It's amazing that he has time to do anything with all the fun he has. So I know he does get... well, especially now he's got the grandparents to watch the kids and the dog anytime he wants. Exactly. So now you're reading me. So I'll give you an example: federally mandated political safety one — smoke alarms. Okay. And we talk about smoke alarms for commercial and residential, but there's a glaring study that's been around for a good long time that said that conventional smoke alarms aren't effective at waking up children. In fact, only about 20% of the time are they able to do that, okay? Nobody's addressed that yet because the body count's not high enough. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So, right now, the return on investment seems to be enough that even though it's a political thing, nobody's touching it.

Well, then we talk about introspection. And I wrote down, "Let's get ahead of this." Can you imagine the first couple of people? And look, homelessness has been around since there's been people without homes. But I mean, if you talk about riding the rail and the old "bum," you know, cutting into the wood to say, "Hey, this place has got good stew," or, "Watch it. This guy's got a shotgun," or whatever else. Cops a long time ago, and military certainly, Brian, you'll remember this, came up with the idea of refugee camps. A refugee camp was a short-term solution for somebody that was displaced by a moment of crisis. And guess what? Those tend to turn into long-term, "Hey, we wanted to get ahead of this," but nobody thought, "What's the expiration date on this?" "When does this turn into a pumpkin?" "This is no longer a good solution." And now the hygiene, and the waste, and some of them because of the drug use or the mental health challenges — and what happens is it gets out of control. But Brian, at the beginning, we all had good intentions. We all patted ourselves on the back going in, right?

I'll give you just one more. I remember when we had to get a new oven, and remember we live in the middle of nowhere. So we had to order the [expletive] from Denver that takes a week to get there by rail, and then to find a guy to install this system at our house. And there was a little metal flange that he had installed on the ground, and a metal flange on the bottom of the stove. And I was like, "What's that for?" And he says, "It's for tipovers (tip-overs)." He said that the old stoves, you could grab them, and when you tried to pull them away from the wall, they would tip over and land on you, and a lot of people died. And so I called "horseshit." And then you know what I found out? A child injures themselves from furniture-related tip-overs every 30 minutes in the U.S., and a death occurs every couple of weeks from this. So what it is is we don't know what we don't know. So when you're asking about the problem, okay, if we don't invest a little bit of time to really take a look at what problem we're solving, what we end up doing is solving for symptoms, or solving for something that's on the periphery, a spiral. And is that the best expenditure?

Look, we're always talking about... I'll give you one "gosh-darn" more. You remember this? Back in the day, I was one of probably five in the state of Michigan police rifle instructors. I got certified, went out to agencies, and back then it was the M16A2, the M14, the M1 Garand. Those were the police semi-automatic rifles that people had. Why? Because the agencies were getting them from that government plan. Remember, the government would outsource certain weapon systems, and then police agencies could pick them up for zero. And then what happened is that someone that went through the training that I went through could carry that weapon on duty, and then they came up with the rack where you had the shotgun on one side and you could have your police rifle on the other side.

Do you know what the movement is now? The movement is now... back then, every chief of police hated me. "Nobody's going to police rifle. Why would we ever need this, Brian?" Look around now: agencies are retiring their Remington 870s, saying the police shotgun is too dangerous. "We have to go to the police rifle." Now, when it comes to research, research light. When it comes to, "I'll vote for the police rifle," Democratic action, or the loudest voice in the room, or some new chief or general that wants to point and say, "I brought the military the P-38." That takes "lead dog" in the sled. And now we get an entire agency retrofitting their vehicles, or getting a new decal, or doing something else where they think they're on the right path. Brian, but at the end of the day, it's the training that's the missing component. If you invest in training, you invest in your people. You invest in...

Well, that's the whole debate of training versus tools, right? It's, "What's the real ROI? What's the real return on investment?" And sometimes you do have to quantify that in a way. I remember working with the Army years ago when we were implementing and getting the buy-off with the ASAT program, and they had to quantify it and say, "Well, you know, it'll come down to basically the cost of a new pair of boots." And it's like when you see it that way, you go, "Oh, okay. That's tangible. I can understand that. I can use that." But the idea about the training versus tools and what the real ROI is, is, you know, gear is just this... It's an "at-bang" solution. So it can enhance your execution after a decision has already been made. It does not affect whether the decision was appropriate.

So what we're saying is we're going to fast forward that. "Okay, this is going to happen again. We're going to likely run into this. So this is how we're going to respond to it better, right?" I mean, that's basically what you're saying, because buying something that helps improve your reaction time tells me you are accepting that the situation is going to happen again, and you're choosing, you're making a choice. "We're not going to do anything about that. We're just going to wait till it happens again." And that's what we're going to do.

And so that's the concept between, you know, training is that "left of bang" investment, right? It teaches when to act, how to assess, why certain behaviors emerge — all of that stuff. But, have you trained people to identify the situation where the tool is even needed? Have you shown them to recognize ambiguity, risk, and prevent indicators? Because if we're not doing that, then the tool just becomes... it will eventually become another problem, another issue. We're eventually going to have to get a new one.

Do you remember? Oh, did you send it to me? It was just, remind me, because you brought up the smoke detector one, but the first one of the fire alarms where they said that they wanted to cut down on people pulling fire alarms just for no reason at all. So when you reached in, it grabbed your arm and locked you in. So now you're sitting there watching a school start on fire, and then, you know, you've got to choose. "Do I let everyone know, or do I burn to death, or do I not pull the fire alarm and save myself?" Or be a witness. Think of that, Brian. And we go, "That's... that's so stupid." It's like, "No, but that's the first iteration, or that's how these things work." It's going, "Okay, here we got this new thing, and we implement it." We don't realize the second-order effects. We don't say, "What else could happen from it?" And so that first model, there's going to be errors. The MCAS system in the 737 fixed the problem. It's just no one knew that, right? It solved the issue that had been created by putting these new larger engines on and changing where they were at on the wing or whatever. It solved that problem, but it created disaster. It created catastrophe that was all completely avoidable. So, it's like those questions, that's the kind of heart of the matter to start with.

Yeah. And I would add this. So, I don't remember the name. My memory is gone now, folks. I am sorry. Fentanyl is a hell of a drug. Lois, what's the gear turning point called for your TA-50 in the Marine Corps? Remember the place that was out at Penn where you had to go and there was a shipping thing? This CIF (Consolidated Issue Facility). Exactly.

So, you know that I used to, for Combat Hunter back in the day, I used to have to trek across the country with my little Sharpay, Jager. And Jager had a buddy — I can't remember his buddy's name — that worked for the special forces community. I think it was Woolly, or Woodsy, or Wooby, or whatever, that was out in Grand Junction, and he manufactured boots and sleeping bags and gear specifically for the SO (Special Operations) community that was the best in the business. And so Jager was always getting that [expletive] at the lead and had insider track information. And I remember we met him one time at that facility, and he was going through some of the gear, and he was a really nice guy. And so we were standing there, and there was a bunch of colonels from the Senate and there was a bunch of generals that were listening in on the conversation. And there was one guy — I'll never remember his name — but he was a civilian adviser that came to audit what we were doing. And he said, "You know, the question here is, do I want them to have that set of boots or that sleeping bag in their TA-50 when they go to combat, or do I want them to have Greg's training before they deploy?" And everybody got quiet for a minute and said, "Well, why are we choosing that?" And he goes, "That's exactly what we're choosing for, for every dollar and minute and classroom that we were taking up."

Brian, you remember when we were working for the Marine Corps, and you, Shel, and I were in that shower with the open door [expletive], and that was the only place that we could do the training. We were all sitting on ammo boxes inside and projecting on the concrete wall like at Flores or one of those places, and people were coming in and taking a shower after gym and everything, and the cord kept getting unplugged or somebody would get electrocuted, and we'd have to slow down while we're doing CPR. We never invested the same money or mindset or anything in training until when? Until the body bags stopped coming back. So the first time a body bag comes back, everybody goes full speed. "Let's stop this." Whether it's cops, whether it's security, doesn't matter what it is, and let's take all these steps. And then there's a flurry of typing, and all the [expletive] goes on the news, and everybody talks a good story and buys a new decal for the vehicle or red and blue lights or whatever, right? And then what happens is time goes by, and we forget all those lessons learned, and we go back to doing [expletive] the same way that we always did it until what? Until the next emergency comes up. And that becomes the historical perspective that we go from, is that, "See, I told you we needed that can opener, new light, whatever else that equipment is."

We have to stop thinking like that. What we have to do is we have to have a practical answer, because you wrote it, and when you sent me the message that we were doing this, you wrote that no device will ever outperform good judgment under pressure. And I highlighted that, Brian. That meant more than any of those other things to me.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, it does the work of three items. Yeah, it's cheap and it's unbreakable. But you know what? If you can't think your way out from under the situation, you'll never open the pouch that it's hidden in.

And the kind of ironic thing to me with a lot of this is everyone is concerned, which they should be, about liability, right? And so it's like, "Okay, well, you know that this is something we're liable for. You knew or should have known." But lawsuits are rarely ever about your lack of hardware, right? That's not where it comes from. They're about lack of justification or lack of training. Mistakes don't happen because of outdated equipment. They're happening because of outdated thinking. And of course, in some of the cases we're bringing up, the mistakes are happening again, not because of outdated equipment, but because of new equipment, the new thing, and it's going to cause issues. And it's like we come to the solution, we go slap the table like you said, "Oh, I think this." And, "Yeah, we like what Bill thinks, and Greg's one of our top guys at that, so that's what he thinks we're going with." It's like, "Well, hang on. Maybe Greg, your opinion is completely correct, 100% right, and it's the standard, and everyone should believe it, and that's what you should do." But your solution has nothing to do with the actual problem, right?

It's a solution to some extraneous factor. Yep. Yep. Right.

And again, it goes back to just how we are. And man, when I see something new coming down, right, it's the whole, "Okay, great." "You gave them a scalpel, but you didn't teach them anything about anatomy." "You gave them this thing, but you didn't teach them about the context of it." So, it just becomes this abstract thing that I just point to and, "You know what, it just works," or, "It's just this thing that we do." And so, when something happens and it goes wrong, I'm [expletive]. I'm screwed. I mean, look at all the money you invested. Come on.

So, and obviously, we're all about people and humans, and people — I've heard it described as — "the human weapon system." And that's fine. Just "the human system." You want to call it that, that's fine. But tools are inert objects. The person utilizing the tool is the weapon system. It's not a gun. It's the person operating the gun. It's the human interaction with it. And then this goes to how I look at all issues. Like, it's not that drugs aren't the problem. It's drug addiction and people's interaction with the drugs that are the problem. The gun is a piece of metal sitting on a freaking table. So, it's the human interaction with the gun that the problem is. And so, it all comes back down to that. But when you do that, you're one, assigning responsibility to people, and everyone loves doing that in certain situations and saying, "You're the problem, and this is what it is, and they've got to go." But when it comes to then you accepting responsibility for that, it's like, "Well, no, if I would have had a better tool or if we would have had this thing, then I wouldn't have done that." It's like, "No, we haven't mastered sort of vanilla yet. We haven't mastered basics yet." So, why are we doing this thing when that situation, or that solution to that problem, we could just avoid the problem in the first place? And I don't think we do that, right? We're not very good at it, which is we make little strides or advancements, or people will say it and they'll go, "Hey, yeah, that's a great concept or idea." And then they'll turn around and go buy the new thing, and it's like, "Well, wait a minute."

And tell you to stand down because, "Well, you don't understand."

Well, not even tell you to stand down. So, like, "Yeah, we'd love to do that, but we don't have the money."

It's like, "Yes, you do." That's what I'm trying to say, Brian. What happens is they turn it into a choice. They turn it into a decision and try to get you on board, going, "You just don't understand the pressure we're under." "You know, this is an immediate thing that we need to do." Yeah. Okay. And Wiggys, that's it. Wiggys, the best tools in the world for Special Forces, folks. Look up Wiggys.com. And if you go there, make sure you give a shout out to Brian and I. Holy [expletive], my memory is horrible. Look, back in the day, you know that The Edge was the premier self-defense shooting, shoot, move, and communicate academy for everybody. And one of the things that we did on the range is we had these little baby paper plates because they were very cheap at the dollar store. The little white ones with the corrugated edge that were probably, I don't know, six inches around. And then we had much less. What would that be? The 3-inch diameter and then the other ones that were probably 6-inch diameter. I know [expletive] about math. And a staple gun, and we would staple those up. And what you were taught to do is from the holster, then from the ready, from whatever position that you were, you had to put a number of rounds in each one of those targets. Then we would transition to a paper target that was significantly bigger with a small mark that was on it. And it was that: "Hit the small mark with your bullet, and then make each subsequent bullet touch the hole from the first bullet." And we would work on that under speed and duress. And then at the end of the day, we'd turn the target over, and it was a human target with all the X-rings and the 10-rings and everything else on it. And people go, "Holy [expletive], I can't believe I shot that well." Then guess what we did? We deconstructed them by having them shoot at those targets, and they couldn't hit a goddamn thing.

So what's the worst thing when you're shooting? It's you. How you think under pressure, the pressure that you put yourself under, because the tool that you have — the firearm and the bullets — are manufactured to specifications to fire and function the same way every time. Okay? There would have to be a malfunction for them to miss. So, what's the thing that continues to go wrong with systems? And that's the person, the human capital that you have out on the street every day. No matter what that human is doing, whether they're a school security guard or they're working for your HR or anything else, it's how they perceive, anticipate, how they react to whatever is going on.

And Brian, I can tell there's still a problem because we still, after the shooting at the Jewish Museum, what do we get? We get, "Oh, pre-attack indications. Let's look them up." "Yeah. Okay, let's laminate that." Just saying "pre-attack" takes us down the wrong road. Understanding anomalous behavior is much more important than whether it's a 9mm or a .40 cal. But why do we fight that lowest common denominator? It's much easier to go to my range instructor. It's much easier to go to my driving instructor or my self-defense instructor and ask them, "What's the flavor of the day?" Nobody would argue right now that Jiu-Jitsu is the "flavor of the day" for police. Okay. Is that going to be the same in 11 years? Nope. Not even close. Okay. And I'll predict that right now. I won't be around, but Brian...

Well, so it's funny how fast it went from, "Hey, all the data and all the research shows that mobility is survivability." And if you go to the ground, you are X amount more likely to get killed or get into this situation or have something bad happen to you. So you don't ever want to be on the ground. And then that was quickly reversed to, "You're going to the ground." And it's like, again, you just had a complete flip-flop there. Or is it like, what's my argument constantly with a coffee table (referring to a specific person)?

Okay. Writes a number of books, very popular, he's out there. First of all, he's not a police expert. You don't qualify as a police expert by speaking to cops or writing a book to cops. That's not how that works. Second part of that is a lot of his research is based on S.L.A. Marshall's work. And when you go back and you start taking a look at faulty research methods, how many people in our industry can we go back and point to where they went and took the wrong exit, Brian, and just stayed with it for a good long time? And their stuff, people still quote it. And you know, it's like anybody in situational awareness that says, "Hey, the OODA loop is the most important thing." "Cool your jets, Romeo." The problem is that you're not seeing the big picture because you're too close to it, and you're making money. The idea is, put your boots on the ground inside of that circle, doing Kodokan Judo, and fight your way out. "Well, how do you do that?" Good judgment under pressure. And what does that mean? Cognitive. What does that mean? Strategy. If you use a good strategy, you will overcome any opponent. And that means predicting and not getting into the situation.

So what happened with the airlines? The airline goes, "Let's just put on a bigger engine." And somebody in the back of the room yelled out, "You know what? That's brilliant. We already got pilots that can do that." And then when they had a problem, what did they do? What was their "flash to bang" on that, Brian? "Well, let's put another machine on there that counteracts whatever the human pilot is doing." So, right. And so now it's machine on machine on machine. And it's like, "Hang on here." We're in a new domain. We've lost them. We've lost the plot here on what we're trying to do.

And those are some of the common mistakes in any type of resource allocation. You brought it up as, "Okay, we're choosing between something," or, "There's a finite amount of resources and time, right?" So we have to figure out what's the ROI, what's the best bang for the buck. And so, like we've talked about, the tech solution is always the simple answer. But if I'm not also incorporating some sort of training timeline and pipeline and implementation — a detailed implementation plan — that can completely backfire. And so that means if you have a new tool, a new piece of gear, but you're still using old SOPs, that 737 is going to crash. It's going to crash and burn and kill everyone. So that's a whole thing. So it's like, if you're going to have these hardware upgrades, you have to have a software or mindset upgrade, or training upgrade for the individual. And I think that's always the necessity. And then from that, you don't always necessarily need a hardware upgrade. So if you're cutting out that training to afford some piece of gear, whatever that is, you have to realize that then and say, "Well, you have to give something up in order to gain something, right?"

Always. Yeah. No matter what it is, you always have to give something up in order to gain something. So, what are you gaining versus what you're giving up? Are you getting the value there?

That's just a life... you could this is a life motto, right? "You have to give something up in order to gain something." So, as long as what you're gaining has a greater return on investment, is more effective for you, is a net positive than what you're giving up, then you're doing okay, right?

You're doing good, right? But that's not always the case in these.

And so, "buy before we analyze it," this "this is going to make us safer." That's not a strategy. It's just not. I mean, and that's... where are you starting with this? I think is my biggest issue with this. And plus, you know, you just talked about all the range stuff, and I agree, and I'm not bashing anything that people are doing, and I certainly don't get into tactics, techniques, and procedures. But when you say like, "Hey, you've got to be able to think critically under pressure." "You've got to... we've got to have this level of skill." It's like, "Well, you're still talking about the human." And a lot of that stuff came from especially the Tier One military units. And it's like, "Well, look, they can think through the situation and think under pressure because there isn't pressure yet, because they've fired so many 'gosh-darn' rounds that they can't miss if they tried, right?" I mean, it's just like the Tier One, the special units that do a lot of hostage rescue stuff like that, right? I train and work with those guys, and it's like we do so many reps in training that you just won't get it wrong. You can't, because you only know how to do this right thing. So when something comes up that's non-standard, you're not overwhelmed in the situation. Your cognitive load is less because you've done it so many times. Well, guess what? That takes years and years and years and years of training, experience, to get to training. So the military Tier One unit, well, they have that time, they have that luxury, they have that budget, they can afford to do that. But most places can't. Those are the only types of places that you can get away with that kind of stuff at. And so it's like we're not even looking at where our failures are really happening. And the reason I was bringing up the range stuff is, and the decision-making in that too, that has to do with the sort of the cognitive load in those situations. But more gear equals more complexity, which equals more points of failure. I mean, the more things you throw at it, the more likely something is to go wrong. And so each new tool you introduce, you've got to reorient, you've got to get reps, you've got to have the right context to use it effectively. And so if you're doing all of that additional training that you know you're going to have to do when we get this new thing, is it worth it? Or do we just do some new type of training, save our money on the new thing, and figure out what the real problem is? And it's like that analysis is never done.

Let's [expletive] in a punch bowl, shall we? And let's serve it up fresh to everybody because we get a lot of trainers that are on here too. So, if you're a cop and you're a trainer, answer the following question: Have you ever been on a homicide or a suicide where it was a .22 long rifle? Yes. Yeah. What about a .32? What about a .38? What about a nine? Go all the way through the different calibers to the worst handgun, which was a single-shot pocket derringer, all the way up to an M98 Barrett with a .50 cal. You've seen them all, okay? So, it's more important for shot placement, but we all talk about stopping power. Why do we talk about stopping power? Because of fear. Why do we talk about it for fear? Because we saw the Norco bank robbery. We saw the West Hollywood (shootout). We saw the agents in Florida get overwhelmed when they went to make the traffic stop and the guys outgunned them. We saw the "coppers" from California Highway Patrol laying on the slab in the morgue. And we say, "Never again." And, "That's never going to happen."

So we have leather gear with higher capacity magazines. And then now what we're doing is we're chasing the gear, and you know what we should be chasing is the critical thinking, because if you can outthink a cunning opponent, we know from the pathology that you can kill somebody with a .22 or a .38 or a .32 or a "gosh-darn" slingshot, you know, or a nut or a bolt that came off the neighbor's lawnmower. So we understand physics. That's something we can wrap our brains around. But what we don't understand is how critical thinking will trump any new tool, any new resource that you try to bring to bear.

The problem, the age-old problem before deployment in Iraq: "What's the turning radius on this Vic (Crown Victoria)?" And none of them knew. And, "How far can it run if you get shot in the oil pan?" And none of them knew. And Brian, you remember that our teacher and I, we dropped the mic and walked off the range because we didn't want to die with those idiots when they were in combat. They were shipping all that gear over, and not one person asked the question, "Hey, what happens if we hit and the airbag deploys?" "Is the Vic out of service? What happens if we get T-boned in the intersection and the vehicle shuts off?" Do you remember those? And Brian, that's... now I don't know time, but that's like 20 years ago now that we were asking those questions. What happened to that? What happened to the curiosity, Brian? Where all of a sudden somebody in the back (of a hypothetical meeting) raises their hand and says, "I'm Manutin Betta. This doesn't sound like the best idea." But we've gone past that because new [expletive] looks cool, and it's a race gun. And now I want to be like a fast roper. That's not your job. The more time you're spending on the range, you're not on the road. The more time you're spending flipping those tires, you're not out meeting your community. Now, do I say that they can exist in the same space? Of course they can. But that's what you should be working on. You should be working on your strategic, operational, and tactical plans, not buying new gear and spending all that money you don't have.

It comes down to, what questions should we be asking, and how do we analyze? How do we actually scope the problem? And, you know, these are really good questions to ask, but the problem is they have been, kind of like you alluded to with your person in the board meeting at the beginning of this talk, "How do we scale this?" It's like, "Wait, you haven't solved the problem yet," or, "What problem does it solve?" It's not that though. Because what those questions do is it forces you to clearly define what the problem is. And when you go through those simple thought experiments, you go, "Oh, wait a minute. We're not really approaching this correctly." Or we're not being clear in this area. And so I always do the, obviously, "What problem does it solve?" But it's like, "What is the actual performance gap?"

I actually just even this morning, you saw Garrett Klein (Dr. Klein) who we had on, who we love. He posted something about, "Look, when people do historical perspective and they do these case studies, they do whatever, we're often obsessed with, or we get enlightened to, what happened. Meaning, 'Okay, here was the time, here's the maps, here's the decision that was made, here's the caliber, or here's this,' whatever." It's like, "Well, but we don't ever get into, what contributed to these decisions?" "Why did they do that? What were all of these contributing factors?" Because if I can break those down into three biggest ones, I know, "Well, these are the three biggest constants." And then I can go back to other situations, "Well, wait a minute, these are all the same three. Wait, these are the same three contributing factors." It has nothing to do. You know what I mean? Sometimes it's something you never expected. It's dehydration, it's lack of sleep, it's that person didn't understand the graffiti. It's something simple. Many, many times it's... saying, "What's his name? Gavrilo Princip (Gabriel Prince), you know, assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, and that started World War I." It's like, "No, that was not... that's not... what did that come as?" No, that was that lit the kindling that was sitting there soaking in gasoline and mounting and mounting and mounting. But all that stuff was the issue, not him carrying out that one single act. It wasn't that. It was all of this other stuff. And so it's like, "What is the performance gap? What are the costs of not investing in our people?"

And even... I still see it pop up like once a year on LinkedIn where someone posts the... you know, it was maybe attributed to Steve Jobs or whoever, probably no one ever said this, but it's like clickbait. Where it's like, they said, "Well, hey, we've got to train up these people. We've got to do all this." And it's like, "Well, what if we train them up and we give them all these skills and all these resources and they leave and they go to another company?" And the response is, "Okay, well, what if we do all that stuff, or what if we don't do any of that, and they stay here and they don't leave?" And it's like, "Oh, yeah." Like, I get that you have to look at it in that way. But you know, where these questions... where do most of our critical incidents begin and where do they go wrong? Like, where did it actually begin? Where did this start? Because we often get laser-focused on just that: "Here's the problem." It's like, "No, no, no, wind that tape back. So where did those begin? Why?" Because they're the most introspective agency that we know. They're constantly going, "How many hours did he fly? What plane was it? What is the barometric pressure?"

"What were the weather conditions at the station? What was the radio?" Look, we never do that. What we do is we get a PIO (Public Information Officer) to stand in front of people and go, "Look, he had a gun. Look, he had a gun. Look here." While we slow down the tape: "He had a gun and turned on our officers." Why? Because again, fear drives how we're after-action reviewing those incidents.

Yeah. And we see that. We see that every day. I'll tell you what: you epitomized this discussion when you sent me, "If you removed all your high-speed gear, would your people still make good decisions?"

You know what? If you're listening to the sound of my voice, write down Brian's words and ask yourself that question. And then ask a friend that question: "If you removed all the high-speed tactical gear, all that cool stuff that you got, would your people on the road still be making good decisions?" Would your people in the classroom? Would your employee at the cashier or at customer service? Because that's what it applies to. It applies to employing yourself, right?

Well, yeah, because it's like, "Okay, if you got rid of all of the tools, would the person still be able to solve the problem?"

"Would they still be able to do it?" And here's the thing: how many organizations do we work with where they are unwilling to answer that or ask that question? Because now what?

"Well, now I know what the problem is." "Now I'm liable for it if something happens."

And we have staffing people. We still... it's like, "Well, that's not a solution." You just identified a problem child. Like you always give the example, "Everyone's got someone when things go wrong." And you've got Person A is on it. It's like, "Who's there?" "Oh, Person A. Send them everything they need. Just do what they tell you." "Wait, who's there?" "Oh, Person B. Get them out of there and go send Person A." It's like, "Well, if you already know that right now, you've identified what the [expletive] problem is." And so you actually are liable now, because if you can go back and say that, and you knew, then you're... it's dead weight at that point. They're not providing value to the organization.

I had one personal situation I'd like to share because, you know, I want to tell my story. So here we are in Afghanistan, working with the Ministry of Interior, and they say, "Listen, working with our coalition partners, we'd like to develop a patch because patches were more important than coins back then. And let's have a good design patch." And every single one of them had a rifle and a lightning bolt and a machete and an explosion and all those other things. And I said, "Well, what about Shona Ba Shona? What about standing shoulder-to-shoulder?" And they go, "Okay, well, we can put that on there, of course, but what else would we put on?" I go, "A wheelbarrow and a shovel and a rake." And they laughed me out of the room, Brian. They laughed me out of the room. A couple of weeks later, I get a call, "Hey, can you come back and see General [unpronounceable name]?" And I go, "Yeah." And we go back, and here's all the reps in the room. And they go, "Hey, we like that patch design." "You know what? We are so hung up on being the force." You know that in other countries when you see a shield, that means defense. When you see that on an American patch, that means we're going to use the shield to beat you down and then hook you up and drag you out of there. You know, it's all in perception. And the perception of having the high-speed equipment is for you to placate the people that work with you and for them not to be scared. And right now, take a big dose of SDF up, because you're saying, "I'm not afraid when I go on the road." Of course you are. If you weren't, you wouldn't have all that stuff. You would invest in your A-game, and your A-game is critical thinking. That's the performance gap. You know what? Report writing, talking to people, walking up and carrying on a conversation, Brian, that's where your money is right there. Because if you can do that and you can shoot reasonably well, you'll be fine, right? But that's not where we start thinking. Would you agree? I mean, you're an expert, a subject matter expert.

I am. But a lot of that really has to do with how we measure things, right? How? And there's a great — I don't know who said it, I think John Peters uses it a lot — where it's, "Not everything that we measure matters, and not everything that matters gets measured." And so, how do you do that? Because this goes into even like the PT (Physical Training) standards, and what to do, and how that stuff changes. And everyone's like, "Well, you should have to be able to do this and you should have..." It's like, in no way — let me be very clear — in no way do any of those exercises and the time you get on those exercises translate to how you will perform your job under pressure. They just don't. Obviously, you want to be in better shape. You want to do this. But that's not the thing. Because I can measure it, because I can time your mile run, Greg, because I can count how many pull-ups you can do. Well, it's easy for me. But I can measure or I can score your target, right? I can score that. I can say, "Well, here's the number, and that's either a pass or that's a fail, or that's, you know, need retraining or new this." And so it's very simple. It's very, very, very, very [expletive] simple, right? Is it inches? Is it meters? Is it money? How are we measuring this? It's like, "Well, what about outcomes?" And this has gone even, especially with policy, too. I mean, how many times have you seen a politician or someone be like, "Oh, and we spent this much money on this initiative." It's like that's not a measurement of performance. The amount of money you spent, that's the cost. That's not measuring the outcome. What did we get from that? What came of doing this? What came from... and because it's a little bit more complex, people stay away from it and they go, "Well, I can't justify that in a budget." It's like, "Well, if you're thinking in terms of yearly budgets, then you're [expletive]. There will be zero improvement, you know." And that's my biggest thing about any plan coming in, especially... politicians are such a great example. No one goes running for the mayor of a metropolitan city saying, "Here's my 10, 15, and 20-year plan for reducing crime in this city." Not one [expletive] one does that. Why? Because, "Well, that's kind of hard to measure." "But I can point at this number thing right here." Even though that might have to do with, "Well, we were on a lockdown and things changed, and then the economy changed, and this..." Like, all of these extraneous factors might have been the issue, not anything that you did. In fact, some of the stuff that you did may have had a negative impact on it. So we don't know how to measure this stuff. And that's just very... then it becomes implicitly hard to understand as a human what I'm getting out of something because I have to see it. I have to feel... even our private sector clients, Greg, what did we hear from someone who said, "You know what? I was hesitant. I didn't buy into any of this stuff, but everyone said you guys were the best and you've got to bring them in." "And oh my god, I am completely bought in. I never knew we were going to get this much out of it." "I never knew that was going to happen because..." And why? They've never seen anything like that.

Get results, and they saw tangible results. Brian, last night on the news, Rod Blagojevich (Bleojovich) from Illinois, your boy, was ongoing and counseling people and taking him to task. And I'm thinking, "Wow, did you learn that when you were in prison?"

Well, that's the thing. Here's the thing about him: he was kind of railroaded by political corruption, and he was also a part of political corruption. So, it's like you can't be the perpetrator and the victim. Like, it doesn't work.

But what I thought and wrote down when I was watching him last night, you're spot on, and I love that. Brian's a Chicago boy when he talks about laws and legal and bending rules and stuff. I listened because I understand he's got a different perspective. But I was thinking last night when I was watching him that, you know what, you will see an increase in your home security if you only have a sign that says, "This property is protected by so-and-so alarm system." It's a fact. But if you put that up, okay, if you just latch your gate when you go to work, it will increase your safety and security at home. But folks, if your life depends on it, at the end of the day, it's just a [expletive] sign. And somebody is going to call you on it, and somebody's going to climb that fence, and they're going to poke their head in your house.

Yeah. So, are you prepared for that?

So, all these talismans, all these totems that you're waving out there, "Hey, this thing is going to be it." There's going to be a new thing, and Guns & Ammo is going to copy on it, and Car and Driver, and now you're going to say, "Did we save a life by spending that 1.8 or 3.6 or whatever million dollars?" And I'll shut up after I say this. Do you remember the "gosh-darn" camouflage pattern for the Navy that made it impossible if you fell overboard to see you? Okay. Do I need to say more? And anybody out there that's in a "blueberry" (Navy blue uniform)? Okay. But remember we used to role-play, and it was like, "What the hell is that?" Well, somebody thought that one out. Come on. Come on. Where are we? Where are we in this? And you know what? "If you removed all that high-speed gear, are your people still making good decisions?" And if they're not, you're wrong. And it's okay to throw in the towel and back up and start over. Tabula rasa. A reset is not a bad place to be sometimes.

Yeah. And again, I'm not anti-gear or anti-new tech. I just don't think a lot of places need to be concerned with it. Meaning, some of those things are going to work themselves out over time, and there's always going to be a new thing. You don't have to be on top of every little thing that's happening and new. It's just not, because some of them are going to go away, and some of them are going to stick around. And when it sticks around, you go, "Okay, I guess I'll use that then." I mean, it's not a lack of innovation or not being forward-thinking. It's going, "Well, here's what we know works, and that's going to be the bedrock foundation of everything that we do. And then as new things come in, I can ask the appropriate questions, adopt them if I think it'll help me in the way we do things, because it should come from you." How many places have we been where it's like, "Well, we've got to get them better at this, and their decision-making needs to get a little bit better, and it's difficult because it's complex?" It's like, "Here, does this decision, this thing you're about to do, is it aligned with the vision, the mission, and the values of your organization?" "Well, no." "Okay, then don't [expletive] do it." You got it. Or change the vision, mission, and values, or change what it is that you're doing. All right? If that's what you have, because then you'll identify, "Oh, wait a minute, we're not doing things correctly." "We actually do have to do this." And you are an influencer, Brian. If you influence decisions at your agency, remember that by adding to the cumulative load and by adding to the cognitive load, you're not doing anybody any favors, because what you're doing is you're making a situation more complex. And the more complex it is, the more chances for friction points or points of failure. And because you don't have the time and the money to try it as an experiment at some small agency within your community or whatever else, then it's prone that you're going to have your biggest failure right on the street, right in front of everybody. Is that the place we need to go? Is that the decision we're trying to make here?

So when I was still in a world where I had to stay proficient and qualified on different weapon systems, right? You know, so it was a whole bunch of different ones. And so the way I shot was like with my supporting hand, which is my left hand, I had a specific way, which a lot of people do. And I would sort of have my thumb pointed straight out, you know, accompanying that side or accompanying my hand if it was on a pistol. And it's like, because people go, "Well, you can hold it this way, and then you can move this over, and you can move your arm here and do that." I go, "Yeah, that's great." But here's the thing: this manner in which I hold this pistol is the exact same way I can hold that M4 and that Remington 870 and that M203. So I learned one way and I can use it in a whole bunch of different weapon systems, in different... absolutely. So it's not... I don't have to think about it. It becomes the way I do things. And it was like such a simple way for some people to see like, "Oh, I get it. If you do one thing one way, and you can use that in a multitude of uses..." That's better than learning 17 different things, or 10 different ways of doing something, or all of these different... It's like, "Dude, you've got to simplify." You've got to take... It's like your first deployment or first time ever doing something compared to later in life. Like, you know, my first deployment, dude, I had every mag pouch filled. I had a drop mag pouch that I carried, and it was on, man. And then years later, I was like, "Hey, anyone got a rifle or pistol for me to carry?" Because I would love to have one. It's like, "Get rid of all that stuff."

Think about that with your TA-50. I remember every time that I deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, the military sent me with every piece of issued gear that I had. And there was me with front and back and duffel bag drag and everything else until I got to my unit that was going to start my rotation through that country. And guess what I did? I threw everything in a CONEX container. And when I was flying back out of that country, they reintroduced me with all that gear. There was not one of those items I ever used. So turning that [expletive] back in was pretty easy. What happens is you're taking up part of my load that could be used for other things, salient things that we sat down and thought about and said, "This trumps that." No fight there. And then the second part is, Brian, cognitive efficiency makes it easier for me when I'm in a situation. It takes items off of the table so I can consider the factors at hand and come up with a strategy, not be in reactive mode all the time. So these are the problems you need to be solving, buddy. This is it.

And I guess my final word would just be that if you can afford the gear and the training, great. But if you have to choose, man, I just always choose people. Always bet on people. They're going to be there anyway. There always has to be a person there. So why wouldn't you want to invest in that individual as much as possible?

So, Brian, if I had to give a final quote, because (it's) a great episode, I love talking about it, it would be to quote Belen (Balen) out loud, "It's raining vaginas." So, I mean, that just epitomizes how... I'm familiar with that one. That's a young girl that has Tourette's and a great show, and every once in a while she slips a zinger out in the public, and you just watch how people react to that. So, yeah, I'll send you a photo.

Really? Yeah. Well, you lost me on that one. I'm going to have to look that up on YouTube after this. Unless it's Loudermilk (my favorite show now). Oh my gosh. I'm going to have to do my homework on that one.

But, all right. Well, we covered a lot. If anyone obviously has any questions, just reach out to us. TheHumanBehaviorPodcastmail.com. Go to the Patreon. There's more on there. You can get recaps of everything we talked about. You can ask us questions and give us ideas on there, or things that you were thinking about. And yeah, I think that's about it. But we covered a lot, but I appreciate everyone. Yeah. I appreciate everyone for tuning in and for our Patreon members who support us. Keep up the suggestions and questions. We like hearing from you all. Thank you all for listening to the episode. And then if you could give us a like, or a thumbs up, or a rating in the best way — even if you can't do the Patreon, just share an episode with a friend, say, "Hey, check these guys out." It really helps us out a lot in getting the message out. So I would appreciate that. But thanks everyone, and don't forget that training changes behavior.