Ryan Evans: You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name's Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. In this episode, I had back on the show one of my favorite guests. I believe this was his third time on the show, General David Berger, former Commandant of the Marine Corps.
General Berger wanted to come on the show to talk about what he views as the permanence of turbulence and what that means for military leaders specifically. He argues we aren't going back to this normal period where everything is more predictable and as it was, but that things are in flux and they're going to stay that way. And that has real implications for the military. Hope you enjoy the show as much as I enjoyed the conversation.
So I was really pleased when I heard you wanted to come on the show again and was surprised, but then very pleasantly surprised when I learned more what you wanted to talk about. And it all started with this speech that you gave. And I'd like you to tell the audience a little bit about what that speech was and what led to it. The Marine Corps asked me to speak this morning at the Modern Day Marine, which is an annual event.
Similar to the Army Air and Space, it's their annual symposium conference. And they at first wanted me to talk about an effort that Mr. Bloomberg asked me to head up. But then I thought after working on it a little bit with some others that it wasn't far enough. Actually, the main point, probably worth discussing in that audience discussion,
Is the environment that we're in right now, and is it unique or is it short or brief or whatever? And then if it's not, how do we develop the leaders? How do we change the way we're working to get ready for that?
That was the genesis. You sort of described the environment as this permanence of disruption and that this isn't sort of a short-term turbulence, that we're in this permanence of turbulence. Is that fair? Fair. I think amplified by this administration coming in with a clear agenda that was a very different approach than
The media certainly captured that. And I think just historically and public-wise, they naturally are going to say that's a shock and then things will settle down. I don't believe that they will for a number of reasons. I don't think it's a temporary thing. What are the events or trends that sort of settled you into that opinion?
First, after a couple of months into this administration, there's no slowdown, no let up in new initiatives, new ideas. That tells you that it wasn't play one hand of cards, we're done. And then we're back to the previous game. I think, one, there are going to be new ideas that they already had in mind. But two, I think they've already demonstrated as things unfold,
They're going to adapt and play new cards. So it's not, that's what led me to believe this isn't a 90-day period or a six-month period and then back to calmness. Why do you think it was particularly important for military leaders to hear what you had to say about this and to process this and to internalize this? Maybe two or three reasons. One,
In another sense, in a metaphor that I used this morning, we are trained, most of us, to respond, plan for, and respond to hurricanes and typhoons and earthquakes and et cetera. So we know how to do that.
And we don't panic. The leaders know how to do that systematically. They know how to divide it into stages and phases. We know how to do that. So my point to them was, first, this isn't new. First of all, you're actually prepared to do this mentally, and you've done it before, just in a different context. Second, I think we have to get past the mental block of, if we just hold our breath long enough, then the storm will pass. You can hold your breath for a long time, but not long enough. This is not a storm that's going to pass. So get past that mentally.
move on to this is how it's going to be for at least as far as we can see. And third, if that's true, I told him, don't treat it as a bad thing, as something that you can de-express.
de-risk, like some companies perhaps would say, this is an opportunity. We know how to operate in fog and friction, like Clausewitz said. There's opportunities in here if we can see them, if we can take advantage of them. What kind of opportunities? When all the chess pieces are in the air, there are opportunities to take action that they aren't there when every piece is set and has been there for a very long time. So if a team comes in, a group of leaders comes in and say, we're open to new ideas, we have our own, and
the old ideas, I'm happy for you to challenge them. Boy, that's an opportunity that maybe wasn't there before. Look at it as such. Challenge the assumptions.
challenge the ways that we did it before. In other words, the ideas that you had two or three years ago of, God, I'd really like to try that, and nobody wanted to listen to you, this is perhaps that time. You particularly emphasized in the speech grit, resilience, and adaptability. How would you recommend that military leaders, even at the sort of small unit level, actually realize and roll that out in practice? One, the training that we do at the lowest level has to be as realistic as possible first.
And second, you have to allow, not just allow, you have to encourage junior leaders to take risks, try a way that hasn't been tried before. And then if it works, great. If it doesn't work, also great. But that's not always the way the training and exercises are run.
If you, Ryan, were to try a way and it didn't work out too often, you're punished. And then everybody else gets the message, okay, use the accepted methods only. So some of it is how we train. But at the higher levels, I think we have to look at ourselves in a mirror as senior military leaders and bounce it off of our organizational culture, which you and I talked about a minute ago, and ask ourselves, is that getting in the way?
Is that inhibiting? Is that preventing us from being disruptive, being creative? Is our culture getting in our own way? I want to talk about organizational culture, but you brought an important point up on training. And I think there's a lot of
uncertainty about training. I don't know if you had a chance to read Secretary of Defense's memo on how all training must be focused on lethality and war fighting. I did. I read that, and my personal concern was, I get it, and in a sense, I'm supportive of it, but I was concerned that there was no specificity as to what that actually meant. And obviously, at the end of the day, the military's job is to fight and win wars and ideally deter them.
But if you don't explain what that means in terms of delivering lethality and warfighting, I think you create a lot of uncertainty in the services as to what training they're supposed to be delivering. And what we don't need right now is uncertainty. What do you think?
My sense is, you know, you'd have to ask him, but my read on it, he was trying to change a focus without the details. If the details don't follow some follow on guidance about, okay, what are the left and right kind of limits? What are the boundaries? Without being overly prescriptive. I think the first shot across the bow of there's only one reason that we have a military at the end of the day to win, to prosper.
protect our national interests. Let's take the focus back to there. That was my read. But if nothing comes behind it, it's just that, okay, we need to all be focused on this, but the how, you know, nothing to follow. That said though, Ryan, I think you can go too far and be overly prescriptive, but there should be something I would anticipate there's probably something behind that after that. So organizational culture is such an important aspect and it's really what makes us our own worst enemies sometimes. What are some of the problems with our
our organizational culture across the services that limits our ability to be resilient and also adaptive to this era of turbulence. Here, maybe an unfair comparison, but a useful one to me. If you compare ourselves to the private sector,
there's some companies that have been around 100 years. There's some that have been around 20, 25 years. And there's some that somebody started in a garage a year and a half ago. The ones that started in a year and a half ago, they got everything on the table. They got nothing to lose. They're like all in. The ones who are 100 years old, sometimes their own culture gets in the way because this is what got us this far, this way of doing business. This is our way of doing business. Our tradition, our history in
inhibits us. And we need to bank on that. That's a source of strength, but it can't tie our hands. It can't be, that's the way that we must do it going forward. Another way to approach it is the values in the military, in our services, in a company, they don't change, but the methods, okay, we got to be creative. We got to be questioned. How do we do it? Have we always done it? Is that really the right way going forward without walking away from your core values? What concrete actions can leaders at very
various levels, all the way from junior and CEOs, all the way up to senior officers, take to reshape organizational culture? You have to go beyond saying, which is kind of what you're hinting at. Saying stuff, especially to Marines who are pretty good at sniffing out things that have been said and I don't see anything following it. They're really good at that. You got to follow it. And by that, I mean from top down. If you say you're going to back your leaders and you say,
challenge the assumptions, be creative, be disruptive. They're watching to see if that's backed up by action. So if there's something that was tried by a leader and it didn't work out all that great, they're immediately looking to see if they're shot in the head. If they're shot in the head, nobody else is going to try that. If they're backed up and said, success is great, failure is great, as long as we're learning fast, let's go, don't do it again. Okay, then that's the incentive for everybody else to go, whoa, that's different.
We have to create an environment where it is okay to fail as long as you don't do it over and over again, and as long as you had good reasons for trying it. But I think the onus is on the senior leaders to demonstrate that they're supporting that, they're incentivizing that, not punishing it. The Marine Corps, I think out of all the services, has the strongest sense of tradition in its own history and legend. And in one sense, that's what makes the Marine Corps possible. And that's what's allowed it to survive and
including various attempts to get rid of the Marine Corps, perhaps most infamously by Truman. But it also can sometimes be a double-edged sword in some of the ways that maybe, perhaps that you're alluding to, and it makes it sometimes kind of hidebound in other ways. It makes this organizational adaptation part a little harder. Do you think that's fair or do you think that's unfair? Fair. We talked about it this morning in our comments. I think General Krulak bore into this in 1957. He
He used the analogy or metaphor of a tribe with medicine men and all the goodness that comes from that and the hindrances, the resistance to change that comes along with it. I think he's spot on then. I think it's a useful comparison today. The tribal part of what we are, in other words, to your point, that bonds us together, especially at the lowest level. We're instantaneous. We're going to back each other up. We're a tribe.
We think the same way. We're better than everybody else. Everybody's after us. You know, we're a tribe. The more senior you are, I think you have to realize that's a strength. It can't be blinders. It can't be...
the kind of seatbelt where you can't even move. It's the glue that holds us together. It makes us unique. It sets us apart. But our leaders have to recognize that can't be also the thing that impedes progress, the thing that prevents us from trying a new approach. So I think at the bottom level, it's there already. At the upper levels, we got to make sure that's not what's holding us back, that we rely on it as a source of strength that ties all three of us together, but it doesn't prevent us from trying something different.
Taking a quick break from my conversation with General Berger to tell you a bit about one of our members-only shows, Marine Pulse. It's a show about the lived experience of U.S. Marines. And in this episode, Walker Mills, one of the hosts of Marine Pulse, talked to a space marine. No kidding, space marines actually exist, and he spoke to one of them, Master Sergeant Matt Bowden. Here's a clip from that episode of Marine Pulse.
So I am your local artillery astronaut. I do fires, so I speak fires. I speak the language at all three echelons, right? So I'm speaking the fires language, and as we continue to proliferate systems, small form factor systems specifically, they're going to end up down at the tactical level.
The nuance right now in space is that no one really understands how they're going to get the fires process done at the lowest level. We have the operational, we have the strategic things kind of lined up, and there's still a lot of work to be done there. But when we do get those small form factor space systems, what does that picture look like down at the tactical level? And that's where I really come in to shine.
You can listen to Marine Pulse by becoming a member at warontherocks.com slash membership. You also get access to Soldier Pulse, Airman Pulse, Sailor Pulse, and a bunch of other shows and newsletters that only members of War on the Rocks get access to. And now back to my conversation with General Berger.
And you lived this, of course, as commandant, pushing through Force Design 2030, fighting against some people that didn't want to make that change. And you made that happen, pushing against some pretty strong headwinds. What did you learn from that experience? A few things. First, ask for advice before you start, which I did. Some from retired senior leaders and some from congressmen who gave me phenomenal practical advice before I started.
And the advice they gave me was not just how to get started, but if you're not willing to do these things and invest this amount of time personally, don't start. Second, communication, communication, communication, communication. Job one for senior leaders. But a part of that was a decision early on about when to engage or where to engage publicly myself as the commandant, holding the office of the commandant. Before any of the
friction came, I already had decided that I was not going to use the office of the Commandant to engage in a public dialogue, general to general, active duty to retire because I saw no benefit, no positives to that. I would engage
absolutely freely and openly privately, but I was not going to use the media as a way to argue publicly back and forth, because I saw that as no benefit, no positives at all. Yeah, I think that's right. And one thing I learned from watching the experience, obviously, I lead a very different organization. You led a military service, I lead a very small media company, but is pushing through dramatic change and reform requires being extremely decisive. And you didn't take any sort of half measures with
which I think is what made it successful and possible in a lot of ways. Decisive, absolutely. And back to your previous point on broad guidance, where's the meat? I think the time that I had to think through and write before I became Commandant allowed us to provide guidance that was specific enough, clear goals in the Commandant's guidance, where are we going?
Without specifying, without being prescriptive. So it allowed me to be specific enough to, okay, they generally know where we are going and why. And it's up to us to figure out over the next couple of years exactly how to get there. And it's very germane to this sort of era of turbulence and leaders at different levels being ready because-
quite a lot of different officers at very different levels. You know, this wasn't just generals talking about what to do. There were colonels, lieutenant colonels, my understanding even some majors and below involved in shaping the strategic dialogue that led to force design. Could you talk a bit about that? Yeah, from the beginning, the idea was involve...
especially from 06 is down, a cross-section of the whole Marine Air Ground Task Force, in trying to skip past where we are today and imagine what the world might look like and what the Marine Corps would need to do. I gave them very few restraints, very few limitations, broad guidance, but they had access to me every day. And this was for months.
And then in the refinement of that and the execution of that, the key was I was absolutely sure myself that if you're going to look out a decade, you're going to get things wrong. Not wrong. It's not going to turn out exactly how you had envisioned it.
So you have to have loops that are built back into the organization where you can make the adjustments in stride. And the third thing is I needed to be willing and my successors need to be willing to adapt, to adjust as you see evidence that, okay, we need to make a little bit left or a little bit right. And don't get stuck by, well, the original plan said this.
adapt along the way and move quickly. You mentioned in your speech, the importance of listening is maybe the most important leadership skill. And this obviously ties to that. I'd love to hear some other stories about maybe earlier in your career before you were a general officer, where you learned that, maybe who you learned that from and different mentors that you think demonstrated that. When I was a captain, somewhere along in the first 10 years, we had a battalion commander that was not liked at all.
the staff and COs were really up in arms. The battalion XO at the time, a major who had a ton of experience in combat from Vietnam and credibility like you and I would dream of, he became a listening sounding board for the staff and COs in that battalion. I watched that happen because he could have said, I'm the XO, shut up. This is where the battalion commander's going, shut up and do. Without being subversive, he made himself available. He listened. I
He explained what the colonel wanted to do, but I think they immediately gathered to him because he was willing to listen, genuinely, sincerely listen. Later on, I had a great tour as a battalion commander and a great regimental commander, Mark Erganus. He was a great listener, but he went beyond just listening, which he did fantastically. He actually asked questions, which I learned powerful. Not just take notes, which is essential. He would ask
Another question and another question, which was something I hadn't seen before. And the point wasn't that I'm going to do everything that you think we should do. But immediately, the Marines who were talking with, and it could have been a captain or a staff sergeant, like he's actually not just taking notes, he's asking me questions like, I need more to unpack that, like,
What's the rest of the story? Boy, that was powerful. In combat, I can remember clearly in Afghanistan, when I was a division commander, there was a tank unit leader who was a captain, a company commander, and he had an idea for trying something in an area that was... We had tried to fix this area. The Brits had before us. This is in Helmand Province, and just none of it had stuck. None of it had worked.
So the captain says, when we're visiting his unit, can you come listen to it? Can you come listen to this idea? Well, he had it all laid out on a terrain model. And for probably 20 minutes, he and his lieutenants and his staff NCOs laid out this plan for how tanks and artillery and helicopters and infantry and all this other stuff. At first, you're like, there's nothing he's going to tell me that a general doesn't already know. I've been a grunt for my whole life. But
But if you put that ego aside and you listen and you ask questions like Colonel Garganis taught me to do, it was like a great plan. Two weeks later, we tried it. It worked. So for me, that's all the proof that you need. If you listen, if you put aside your ego, your biases, and you listen and you ask questions, the great ideas are 90% of the time, they're going to come from the bottom. That was from a captain. It was brilliant.
It worked. Those are great stories. And there's a lot of people out there, and this isn't a political statement, but there's a lot of people out there, and I talk to military officers all the time, and they're actually taking pains to be very non-political, but they're dealing with a lot of uncertainty in the ranks and fear, including, you know, obviously they oversee other service members, some of them oversee civil servants as well, and they
And they're being asked a lot of questions and a lot of them are being very challenged on like, how do I handle this environment as a leader when I don't actually know some of the answers? What advice would you give leaders in those positions? First, don't shy away and don't delegate it. How many people work in your organization here? About 10.
Okay, 10. If it's a really tough issue here in your organization, they need to hear from you, right? Not the number two or the number three. So first of all, don't shy away from it. It's an opportunity to communicate, which is your primary responsibility. It's not to be the most tactically brilliant person in the room. It's actually to communicate. That's your primary job, job one. So first, don't pack away from it. Look at it as an opportunity. Second, get in front of them, be honest, tell them what you know, tell them what you don't know, and
And then listen. In fact, this is tied to your early point. Don't listen to respond. Listen to understand. And sometimes there is no respond. Sometimes they just want to talk. Sometimes they just want to tell you how it feels. They want to know that you heard, that you understand. So I think our human side is to me to listen to you and then immediately my brain starts working on a response. How do you get there for me? Stop that.
Stop formulating response. Just genuinely listen. Maybe they want a response. Maybe they just want to know that somebody heard today. So listen. You don't have to know all the answers. In other words, that's not failure as a leader. Tell them honestly what you don't know. You are their voice up the chain of command.
But sometimes I've learned they just want you to listen and to know that they've been hurt, and that's enough. And they don't expect you to have all the answers. But too many leaders, I think, try to wing it, you know, answer off the cuff, and I got to have an answer or else I look like less of a leader. Wrong. That's great advice. You mentioned you've been a grunt all your life. What's it like being a retired grunt? Great. It's awesome.
I'm not the only one, but I had the chances in my Marine Corps time to do things that I would never, ever have been able to do anywhere else. And my wife did a fantastic job of making sure that we were pacing ourselves the whole way so that at the end, we weren't completely smoked. We had put everything into it, but we still had a lot of energy, still have a lot of ideas, still ready to listen. So in retirement...
Now I work, but I work on projects that I want to work on. My first priority is support the commandant. What direction is he going and how can I support it? And the other things are things that I feel strongly about national security or our economy or the private sector. How can I help us get stronger as a country? So I enjoy it. Yeah, I highly recommend to our listeners the report that you did with Mike Bloomberg. I think it's a very important piece of work. Have you had more time to do more reading in semi-retirement anyway? Yeah.
Yes. A lot more of a balance in a book versus a podcast versus online. And it was a different balance five years ago, even for me. I don't know for you, but it's changing. I still read books, but before it was maybe 70% books and some online, but now it's probably a very different balance. I try to read a variety. I'm not the only one either, but it helps me
stay broad. I liked reading Genesis that recently passed. Secretary and two others wrote a couple of years ago. It's about artificial intelligence and what may play out in the next few years. That kind of book fascinates me. Maureen gave me a copy of Life After Power, I think it's called. And the author picked five presidents and dove into what did they do
after their presidency that was unique or maybe even greater contribution to the U.S. legacy than during their when they were a president? Was one of them Teddy Roosevelt?
Yeah. He just had the best post-presidential, I mean, most interesting anyway, post-presidential. So yeah, I like to read books. I don't think that will ever stop. But now articles, journals, and podcasts that you listen to, because you can do that while you're driving. I'll let you know what I mean. What are some of the non-national security podcasts that you listen to? Most of them have to do with economics. They're either Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg or...
Along those lines, like derivatives of them, because I'm trying to, I'm not trying to become a businessman. I'm trying to understand the business environment in the global context. And how do we make America stronger? I know it's kind of naive, but I think the strength of America is backed by its military, but that's not our strength. Our strength is our economic power. Thanks for joining the show. Thanks for having me on, Ryan. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast. Please don't forget to check out our membership program at warontherocks.com slash membership. Also, it makes a difference, a positive one, when you go into whatever podcast app that you listen to this show on and give us a positive rating. So I'd appreciate it if you'd do that. Stay safe and stay healthy.