Andy Stumpf BAF 2016

hello before I start I think I need to address how difficult it is to follow somebody who is telling stories about aliens I don't know if I can compete with that we call that being at a tactical disadvantage and the community that I came from so we'll see how this goes before I dive in I would like to lay the groundwork for where this information comes from because I want to be honest with you it doesn't come from me the things that I'm going to share with you I learned from others I consider myself to be extremely unique or I am not unique I extreme consider myself to be extremely ordinary what is unique about me is the people that I was surrounded by I saw amazing examples of leadership of teamwork of inspiration and when I was in the military I was under the impression that those things were specific to the military I thought the principles that were for lack of a better term beaten into me when I was early in my career were unique only to the military and I would see them nowhere else and when I transitioned out of the military and started interacting in the business world I was very surprised in companies that were successful in thriving I saw the same integration of teamwork leadership inspiration and in organizations that I saw failing those qualities were not present and I've come to believe over time that the experiences that I had in the military are universally applicable to the business world SEALs are very misunderstood and I'll highlight that point by asking you a simple question how many of you have watched a movie that stars a seal by a show of hands please you can lie to me if you want to I know every hand in this room should probably go up the reason I bring this up is that all of those movies are completely wrong and they focus on the wrong things so before I begin I'm gonna give you a very brief history of where seals came from and what we do in the modern day and then from that I'm gonna build on how we're successful and how we make decisions in 1942 the unit that eventually became the SEAL Teams were called underwater demolition teams and the role of the UDT was to prior to a beach invasion survey the surrounding ocean for obstacles destroy them destroy obstacles on the beach but we had to stay in the water by mandate the high-water line which is on any given day at any given Beach the point at which stop the tide rises to its apex is a pin in the ground we could go no farther than that that belonged to the Marine Corps and the army and that was the origins of what eventually became the SEAL Teams fast-forward to May of 2011 when the United States military located Osama bin Laden and military commanders had access to every military unit inside of the American Arsenal and they selected a SEAL team an organization that drew its origins from the water to infiltrate Pakistan a nearly landlocked country and the question that comes from that is why it's because of our success our success comes from not being tied to any particular tactic we are tied to success not how we achieve the goal we're an organization that is defined by its innovation and its evolution we spend more time looking in at ourself and determining better ways to accomplish the mission than looking outward and caring about what people think of us traditionally when I talk to organizations because I come from the SEAL Teams and the term team is in the name people like me to talk about teamwork they like me to talk about leadership or they want to talk about mental toughness how we select our individuals because we are very unique and how we select our individuals how we train our teams and how we lead them so when you talk about training we talk about mental toughness fortitude resiliency when you talk about how we our teams we talk about teamwork and inspiration versus externally imposed discipline and I love talking about those things I could talk for hours but I have 40 minutes and I want at least give you guys five to ten minutes for questions and I also don't think focusing on conceptual ideas is going to get you anywhere near we're focusing on practical execution will take you because I don't see failure in concept leadership concepts are great they don't fail in concept they fail in practice so I want to talk to you about decision making and I want to talk to you about how we train our leaders both enlisted and officer in the SEAL Teams to make decisions movies I hate them how they're so bad they set an unrealistic expectation movies focus on grenades and explosions people running around shooting guns and there's a reason they focus on that it's exciting but people watch movies and they develop misconceptions people think that seals are capable of making decisions in the moment split-second high risk high consequence time compressed environment decisions and we are and I'll tell you about how we train our people to do that but by focusing only on that moment you are disregarding and disrespecting what got you to that decision point in the first place and what I mean by that is that's how we plan the most effective way to make a decision in a high risk high consequence time compressed environment is to have already made it before that situation occurs and when you do that and you contingency plan effectively you look like a genius because something presents itself to you and you make a decision and you move on if the real movie was written you would see SEAL Teams sitting in front of a laptop arguing over Microsoft Office PowerPoint specifically as to whether or not helvetica in a 10-point or perhaps times new roman' in a 12 bold goes best with the helicopter icon on our insertion slide you can laugh at me if you want to if you want to shut down the modern-day SEAL Teams kill Microsoft Office and we're done it's how we plan it's how we breathe and we send our missions for approval via email it's certainly a new world that's a really bad movie our average planning cycle is 24 to 72 hours I've planned missions in less than 5 minutes but we asked for 24 to 72 hours how do we do it how do you look like a genius in the moment and for us we focus on contingency planning a common motto inside of the SEAL Teams it's a contingency that is going to eat your lunch and here's how you look like a genius and a high risk high consequence environment I'm going to give you an example of the planning that we do and present to you a scenario that shows the difference between making decisions before they occur and waiting till it happens in the moment as a SEAL team we do not have organic assets meaning we don't have helicopters that are ours we rely upon other people to provide them for us we don't have our own armor we don't have tanks or any heavy vehicles with weaponry that you would want to bring to bear so we rely on other people largely to get us to where we go and do our job traditionally helicopters or how we get places in Iraq and Afghanistan and they present a perfect example of the importance of contingency planning traditionally helicopters fly in flights of two and we want four because you have a limited amount of cubic space and a limited amount of weight that you can use so we'll plan an operation for 72 hours we send the operation to higher authority for approval and they come back and they say yes you're approved to go they provide us execute Authority we brief it to ourselves and helicopters land the way we work or the environment that we prefer to work in is under the cover of darkness because it provides for me a tactical and technological advantage so I have a limited amount of time where I feel comfortable operating for helicopters arrive you load up the helicopters you're prepared to execute and go to your objective and one of the helicopters brakes what do you do it depends are you prepared to look like a genius because you contingency planned and you know what your minimum force required is you know what your minimum capability is and you brief that so that per situation presents itself and you make a decision and you move on with the combat operation it requires zero percent of your available harddrive space versus the individual who does not forecast and think ahead the helicopters show up one of them breaks and now you're sitting there with helicopters spinning burning gas as the Sun is just ticking its clock away until it rises on the eastern horizon and you have to figure out how many people do I need what skill sets do I need where is everybody one looks like a split-second decision which it was not it was following a branch diagram and the other one is a leader struggling in a decision based environment we do the same type of thought process when it comes to communication

Channel: CAL ENTERTAINMENT SPEAKERS

Views: 22,521

Rating: 4.9175258 out of 5

Keywords: andy stumpf, stumpf, navy, seal, navy seal, cleared for takeoff

Id: zRSVBLMcB_s

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2017