Learning from Everyone

If I told you how fast Sagan Passport is growing - you wouldn’t believe me. We (no shit) have investors and promoters of other global talent companies as customers.

Climb aboard and join the revolution.

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If you're looking for interesting first principles to press your business forward, you might not think to look to the US Marine Corps (USMC).

These are just a bunch of dumb guys who shoot guns and scream YUT YUT all day, right?

Nahhhh.

Exhibit A.

The Marine Corps Doctrinal Publications (MCDPs).

These babies are packed with insights that are DIRECTLY relevant to today's business challenges - and I find myself revisiting over and over.

There are a few rules to reading these things - here is the first.

Rule #1: Don't be distracted by the military terminology. 

It takes 2 seconds of thinking to see these principles applied broadly - that these are timeless human truths.

I’ve always been obsessed with cross discipline study and reading - you can learn so much from different fields of study.

Example:

I’m obsessed with existential psychotherapy & interrogation.

Why?

Because there is no more distilled human relationship than that between a therapist and patient, or an interrogator and a prisoner.

So much to learn about human relationships!

Similarly - MCDPs are essential reading… because they were developed in the most demanding of circumstances, conflict.

There are no take backesies.

There is never enough info.

There are never enough resources

Things are always chaotic.

…and success depends on clear thinking and decisive action.

From that environment - Marines have learned to thrive.

Worth studying, amiright?

I remember reading in a book a long time ago something like “The Army has their tanks, the Air Force their Planes, the Navy their Ships… and the Marine Corps has their Culture”.

Rule #2: Don't be distracted by the military terminology. 

This is a culture that produces fantastic leaders by the hundreds.

Focus on that.

The hidden value of these publications lies in their accessibility.

They were written for Marines of all ranks, not just the college grads.

The complex ideas of history's greatest strategists are distilled into clear, concise language that anyone can understand and apply.

Each volume is rich with ideas to make your head spin… challenge your assumptions… or just make you better.

Rule #3: Don't be distracted by the military terminology. 

Study them, integrate them, and use them… or else your competitors might!

Here are the volumes (all available for free here) and my favorite quote from each… to perhaps temp you into downloading a few on your kindle… you won’t regret it.

- Warfighting (MCDP 1)

"We must be ruthlessly opportunistic, actively seeking out signs of weakness against which we will direct all available combat power.

- Strategy (MCDP 1-1)

“As in a building, which, however fair and beautiful the superstructure, is radically marred and imperfect if the foundation be insecure—so, if the strategy be wrong, the skill of the general on the battlefield, the valor of the soldier, the brilliancy of victory, however otherwise decisive, fail of their effect.”

- Campaigning (MCDP 1-2)

“It is essential to relate what is strategically desirable to what is tactically possible with the forces at your disposal.

To this end it is necessary to decide the development of operations before the initial blow is delivered.”

- Tactics (MCDP 1-3)

“It follows, then, that the leader who would become a competent tactician must first close his mind to the alluring formulae that well-meaning people offer in the name of victory.

To master his difficult art he must learn to cut to the heart of a situation, recognize its decisive elements and base his course of action on these.”

- Competing (MCDP 1-4)

“For example, two competitors may both desire to possess a particular island. One of them may have a narrative that explains their claim to the island on the basis of its historical ownership of it.

The other may have a narrative that says some of their people currently use the island, and current possession makes their claim stronger.

The two narratives compete with each other to give the fact its meaning. To defeat a narrative, it must be replaced by another one. Simply trying to negate someone else’s narrative is not sufficient.”

- Intelligence (MCDP 2)

And therefore I say: Know the enemy, know yourself; your victory will never be endangered. "

- Expeditionary Operations (MCDP 3)

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.

- Logistics (MCDP 4)

This relation between tactical mobility and numbers of vehicles, between the size of staffs and effective control, will increase in importance in any future war.

Unless they are constantly watched and ruthlessly cut down, vehicles and staffs will multiply until they bog down movement.

- Planning (MCDP 5)

Like command and control, planning focuses on solving problems: identifying a problem (the difference between our current situation and the desired outcome) and preparing a tentative configuration of actions intended to achieve that outcome.

Thus all planners are problem solvers. Furthermore, since planning is problem solving, then a plan is a practical scheme for solving a problem or set of problems.

The object in planning is not merely to solve the problem in the near term, but to do so in a way that also lays the foundation for long-term success.

The problem may be broad and conceptual, involving strategic or tactical issues, or it may be more detailed, involving the allocation or assignment of resources. Not all problem solving, however, requires planning.

When the problem is simple, planning may not be necessary. When the problem is more complicated— involving a variety of factors—planning becomes essential.

This is even more crucial when the problem is actually a complex set of interrelated problems, the solution to each of which affects all the others. If the situation is complex enough, planning may offer the only opportunity to deal with the complete set of problems as a whole.

- Command and Control (MCDP 6)

“Confronted with a task, and having less information available than is needed to perform that task, an organization may react in either of two ways.

One is to increase its information-processing capacity, the other to design the organization, and indeed the task itself, in such a way as to enable it to operate on the basis of less information.

These approaches are exhaustive; no others are conceivable. A failure to adopt one or the other will automatically result in a drop in the level of performance.”

- Learning (MCDP 7)

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

- Information (MCDP 8)

As Churchill noted, ‘A lie gets halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on.’ In our age, a lie can get a thousand times around the world before the truth gets its pants on.

Yallah Habibi,

Jon

Passage of the Week, from Jason Fried.

(From Jon: Swap Software with hiring globally, and you’ll peak into some of my motivations as well)

I’ve been doing this for 25 years, so I’m often asked why I’m still in it and how I stay motivated.

It ain’t the money, as I’ve been fortunate enough to make more than I’ll ever be able to spend.

I enjoy the work and we have a great crew, each a true pleasure to work with. I remain filled with ideas. So that’s part of it.

But it’s more that than.

It’s more of a justice thing, really.

Look at the screenshot attached below.

This is software my neighborhood uses to manage guest parking passes. It’s shit. Maybe you recognize it, maybe you don’t, but the name doesn’t matter.

You know what the company charges for the privilege of using it? $10,000/year. $10,000 A YEAR!

$10,000 year after year of our HOA budget goes to this crap. It feels borderline criminal.

I’m still doing this because the world is flooded with overpriced, crappy, subpar software. 

It hurts people, and it hurts the economy.

I feel a moral obligation to do what I can to replace bad options with great options, at vastly reduced prices. 

I even want to replace great options with equally great options, just at reduced prices. 

Good software should not be expensive.

Software is an absolute miracle. You can make exceptionally good stuff at exceptionally reasonable prices. It’s not like hardware manufacturing where you have to cut all sorts of corners to keep costs in check, or charge a ton for stuff that’s truly well made. Raw materials, machinery, manufacturing, physics — this stuff costs a lot to get right. Software does not.

Yet bad — and great software, frankly — remains way over priced. And some is absolute highway robbery. Like this parking pass software. It’s clear no one cared about it — it’s just built to some spec by people who will never use it. It’s all there, the features tick the boxes, and technically it works, but we’d never ever find it acceptable if it was a physical product. But since it’s software, it can suck and we can still be sold on a $10,000/year contract.

This fuels me.

So hell yeah I’m motivated. And the more bad stuff I bump into, or even great stuff with silly numbers attached, the more motivated I get. It’s a deep well that keeps on providing.

To that end, we’ve just started working on two more new products this year. We’re on a tear. We’re going to keep on putting quality stuff out there at reasonable prices. Not just to prove that it can be done, but because it must be done.