Bill Mankins - SFAB Elements - Identifying/Becoming Professional SFAB Warriors

Bill Mankins - SFAB Elements - Identifying/Becoming Professional SFAB Warriors - Bill Mankins has spent his career working abroad, mastering languages, and constantly improving his training skill set. He's qualified in SCUBA, as a pilot, a nautical captain and is now defending his DOUBLE PhD; basically he's a badass. 

Bill has also developed another incredible skill set...he's able to deploy anywhere and expertly blend into the populace regardless of how complex, dangerous and challenging the environment. Bill and Pete A Turner discuss how leaders, org and individuals can identify and train the best SFAB warriors. 

Break It Down Show, Best Podcast, New podcast 

Haiku 
Advise and assist
The professional standard
Work to stay humble

Similar episodes:
Bill Mankins
Bill Mankins
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For more on the SFAB Elements check out- 
Dr Richard Ledet - Education
COL John McKay - Advanced Partnering
Pete A Turner - Advanced Interpreter Operations
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Join us in supporting Save the Brave by making a monthly donation.
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Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A Turner
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev 
Writer: Bojan Spasovski ​

Transcript

Pete Turner  0:00  
Hey everybody, this is Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show. This week we are featuring a series of shows that talk about advising people overseas, especially for military people, specifically, folks who are going to go through the motto, the military advisor training academy, or who are going to work in an S fab a security forces advisor brigade. So these people are going to go abroad overseas from the US to our partner countries and try to create capacity, whether it's shooting weapons, or patrolling or governing or running an organization in terms of military.

Pete Turner  0:00  
Hey everybody, this is Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of the break it down show. This week we are featuring a series of shows that talk about advising people overseas, especially for military people, specifically, folks who are going to go through the motto, the military advisor training academy, or who are going to work in an S fab a security forces advisor brigade. So these people are going to go abroad overseas from the US to our partner countries and try to create capacity, whether it's shooting weapons, or patrolling or governing or running an organization in terms of military. So the idea behind these shows is to take these partnering skills that a lot of my friends and I have and give them to these folks so they can get an idea of what the elements are. Each show is going to present a different element and facets there of each show also covers the cultural aspects that you'll encounter as someone who's seen the advisor position. Today's show features and starts off. Today's show starts off the week and gets us going with Bill Mankins who's been on the show before you guys should check out his episodes, they'll be in the show notes. Bill is an international scholar. He's a double PhD candidate at the moment and about to be a double doctor very soon defending. He is going to talk about how the organization and how the individual identify who could be a good advisor, what are the basic things that you need to do in terms of training and to identify how do you run one of these organizations and this is what he's studying with his double PhD. His Bona feeties is rock solid. He's worked overseas quite a bit. He is a linguist in several languages, he's a master with culture, and he is someone that regardless of you in the military or not, you can learn a lot from as you look at things from the strategic all the way to the ground truth level, you're going to love what Bill was talking about. Now if you love what we do here, even if it's just military stuff not interested in you will find useful nuggets in this show. I want you to support the show by going to YouTube and finding the break it down show which is my channel and subscribing. That will enable you to hear Every time we put a show out, and that for us is a big, big thing. If you're in the military and you're listening and you want to engage, there's a lot more of this content available to you. I can guide you towards other episodes. Everybody should be checking this out if you're going to go overseas and partner with anybody, if you're going to work across countries, or across company boundaries or intercompany boundaries, even if you're not in the military, these shows will help you better understand how to develop trust and work with people who you don't know or who have cross purposes of your own. Hey, here comes my man bill Mankins. You're going to love him. Lions rock productions.

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cope. This is Mitch Alexis handy

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somebody there's a skunk Baxter Gabby Reese Rob bell. Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Hey,

Pete Turner  2:48  
and this is Pete a Turner.

Bill Mankins  2:52  
This is Bill Mankins and you're listening to the break it down show.

Pete Turner  2:58  
This is an interesting set of episodes. We're doing we're putting together something for a symposium for the S fab folks who are a military unit it's a new unit in the United States Army and the idea is is they'll do a lot of the advising and assisting and teaching and training and free up the the traditional army units the Army units the the cab units all to go do their armor calf artillery things infantry things, and and really develop a professional advising corps as we go out and engage with our foreign partners. So so that's that's the premise of this. And what we're doing is we're putting together the five critical elements of an S fab and how to get how to identify these people what skills they need, and we're going to cover facets of each skill. Today's element is the identify identification of what an S fab soldier is personally to become a pro. And then at the unit level, how do you identify someone coming in who has the potential To become or is already a pro. And with that we have bill here and Bill is a well, we're gonna get into Bill's credentials right now. But bill is about to complete a double PhD. Basically, he is the world's leading expert on this type thing, because he's he's writing the papers and defending his dissertations, and going to start in an academy to develop these kind of special skills. So Bill, thank you for coming on. What are your thoughts on this project?

Bill Mankins  4:29  
I'm Thanks for having me. Again. It's always fun. I mean, it's incredible. My idea. last idea, and I'll tell you, the idea of having basically a professional cadre that's designed to equipped and recruited and trained and focused on working and developing partner armies. Makes a heck of a lot of sense. I mean, just conceptually, like a lot of things that make sense the devils in the details, but how well works in the execution and collect, but it's phenomenal, highly needed skill set.

Pete Turner  5:05  
So let's talk about your background a little bit, because one of the things we've talked about this, so we're just kind of catching the audience up. One of the things about this type of work is there's not a long tab, there's not a trident, you know, you don't just say the words Delta there, you have to create a bona feeties. And I thought we might spend a little bit of time talking about your background and how you got to this point to be like an internationally known expert and how to do this type of work.

Bill Mankins  5:35  
Well, it's a very long story. So for the short version now, and that's this, you know, in my background was a typical high school kid. I went to college, played football for a little bit, and I've had enough blood and shoulder trying to figure out what I was gonna do throughout my life. The military was the greatest, you know, closest thing to teams and brotherhood and mission and strategy and all those kind of fun things. The regular world just doesn't have. So that was my general direction. And then I went around and looked and said, you know, what do I want to do and just try to find the most interesting, hard thing I was doing. I went and talked to all the breeders in the seal option for with the Navy was clearly the way I wanted to go as big water guy, and teaching diving stuff for years. I was teach diving actually in in Turks and Caicos when 911 happened, and I knew I was going in, but that was kind of a hurry up. So I went did that. And I'm having a horrific multiple fracture, femur, and buds. as awesome as that place was. It was amazing, actually. And the people that were phenomenal and really took care of me. So I had a huge Intel background that was not a training that was available to me. So I studied Chinese and whatnot as an undergraduate. They got a master's degree before I enlisted to go be a frog. Yeah, when I broke my leg, due to having an Intel is an Intel the skill set, they gave me an opportunity to go do some of the training schools that you would normally not get to do unless you were already a seal. So I got, I was really fortunate and blessed by that community for allowing me to do some of those things that just were not the normal progression. And then finally, the big Navy stepped in and put me out and said, You're here med, your medic out. And so, you know, it's funny how I came to have an interesting combination of skills was an accident. So yeah, I had a bachelor's and I had a master's and spoke Chinese and travel around the world stuff a lot, knew how to fly airplanes and dive and do all kinds of fun things that I had pursued on my own. And the military gave me all the Intel sort of background and training despite broken femur with the buds scenario. And so then when I was forced out, I went back to school fully intending to go back into the Navy once I healed, even if it took a couple years, so I came to Indiana University because it was a place where you could study foreign languages and area studies, and all the stands that don't exist anywhere else really in the country at that time. There's some more places now. My healing took longer than I thought and ended up basically getting most of the way done through the PhD course. Or I was, you know, healed. I basically got an opportunity to go or the the army organization that contacted me the same way that contacted you to go do your collection and cultural stuff and to basically be that bridge. And so that was the gist of how I got where I got as an accident once I when I did, whatnot in Afghanistan, on the human side and helping brigade and battalion commanders understand the full Intel picture, not just sort of bad guy. targeting. So the full spectrum and how that integrates into a much bigger picture. And that was big. And for me, it was language thing, you know, I'd done the PhD stuff. And so three languages were required. So I had to learn Pashto was one of the languages I learned. So when I was in Afghanistan, it was great to be able to, you know, communicate with local people and talk straight up the same time there was multiple times when I, you know, would still use interpreters. And still, we're talking high level stuff, you need an interpreter. Anyway, that's the skill set about where it came and how I got to kind of the present. And it was after that, I'll just add, this was after that, that I came back after working off and on for three years in Afghanistan devising brigades and that was in 2009 10, and 11, that I decided to do a second PhD in higher education, to address PME and professional military education and looking at how the military in general educates itself. So kind of overall, just Seven change in education issues.

Pete Turner  10:02  
And then so you spent a lot of time on your own attached to units. And watching and talking and listening. Give us an example of what either good or bad advising looked like from when you saw it. Because for folks that don't know, you know, we got to go out and see units perform. And in my case, I know specifically, I evaluated our actions as often as I evaluate actually, probably more often than the other way because if we weren't, it's akin to shooting targets. And I'm talking to the audience now, you know, if you've got an NCO laying on the ground next to a knee three, trying to teach them how to shoot not hitting the target. Well, the target would be the Afghans in this case, and we can't even hit them because our practices are not in alignment. And so how do you tweak that, you know, hey, three down, to up. Let's adjust your windage in all these different things, you actually can make it difference if you know to start to look for that. So a lot of what I did focused on that. So what taking that that perspective bill? What did what did you see that worked well or didn't work? Well or both? If you have two stories?

Bill Mankins  11:13  
Yes, let me give me about a half a second to think, for me really useful. So, you know, in general the, to find advising because this can be broad, you know, in our situation, we had a lot of different kinds of advisors there, for example, representatives who we're working with and through people helping brigades, so for example, their state department representative and agricultural rep and some kind of people that weren't necessarily doing military advising, but they were advising and then there were people that are doing kind of intelligence advising very particular skill sets of you know how to drones or how to do different kinds of stuff. nailing stuff, you know, for overall grand picture, I'd be honest, there were just very few people are doing that. And what I will call a low level strategy or high level operations kind of reality building so that everyone's on the same understanding of what's going on around that consensus building on reality. So an example would be, you know, we had, here's an easy one of the screw up. So we're in Kunar Province, this is 2016. We'll just say that time period, I won't say the particular unit, but it was 2009 to 11. This conventional infantry unit, and the owner was managing a base there, and they were playing rawhide, like the song rawhide on PA system. In the wee hours of the morning, just rockin it through the end. Tire Valley right? Now. There are two parts of this right? So there's the fun sort of like your kicker part of me. It's like, Oh, hell yeah, let's project our presence here and let everyone know that we are here. Right? There's that kind of aspect of it. It's also kind of funny, because you know, you're playing this thing. And it's ridiculous when you think about it. Yeah. And it's kind of good for internal morale, which is the purpose of what it was right? The reason why the, the sergeant major was doing this was because he wanted to create morale internally for his guys, and it was effective. However, the the other part of that was, you're also going to imagine if someone was playing like, the most annoying, called a prayer or like Gangnam Style or some other foreign sounding music that was just odd to you at five o'clock in the morning blaring it over your Peaceful Valley. should that happen in rural Kentucky with a bunch of like, you know, Chinese media I go crazy and be super pissed off. And for good reason, right? So those kind of things are examples of no one else in the advising group. They're the team of advisors that were there to help that brigade. thought to try to rectify that. And that's obviously seriously problematic. Yeah. So I had to talk with him, like, you know, had had to, you know, rectify that situation. So I guess in one story there, maybe there's two of the things that are advising them poorly, which is not advising about it, and things well, which was trying to fix it. And then ultimately, the brigade, receptive they changed, and, and the people actually were around were like saying, Hey, thanks for coming out. I mean, small, but it's significant.

Pete Turner  14:48  
Yeah. Well, I mean, in the advising and capacity building part is a complex job. There's a lot of factors. Yes, you need internal, you know, esprit de corps, but also you Don't want to get yourself blown up or incite violence or diminished your external rapport because of the internal things. And it's a, it's a tough balance. And I get it like you like it's hilarious to establish your dominance and play rawhide and, you know, just be a big, hard to move beast that won't move that you have to deal with. But it does make the delicate work of the day to day conversations more challenging, and they're already get this bill. They're already really hard.

Bill Mankins  15:33  
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Pete Turner  15:36  
What did you see that was good. What's a good thing that you saw, like some tools that you picked up or developed along the way?

Bill Mankins  15:42  
So Well, in terms of observing like in practice in the field, I would say this, you know, that read ETS, I thought from so it's what are you advising on right, and those guys were advising on tactical training. And I thought they were the ones that I interacted with, including our work. Amazing postcards were spot on with just an instant, incredibly well, and had a really good ability to build rapport with, in a funny way because it to build rapport with local soldiers. So I think you know, sometimes on two ends, right this culture thing can go in not be paid attention to enough. And it can be assumed that people are so different when some things about humanity are very, you know, universal. And the kinds of people who go become soldiers are pretty much the guy unless it's a draft or they're dictated to, but the kinds of people who volunteer to be soldiers are roughly the same personality of people all around the world. Humor tends to be a little bit more crass. The, you know, the certain things that just tend to go with that kind of group and so while you got to be culturally astute and not do certain things, the challenge is knowing which things and image things not and I was impressed with the grainy TTS because they did a really good job of Not only knowing their craft, of course, the technical part of the tactics, but the capacity to build, report the local Afghans and laugh and joke with them. I mean, they would sit and man some of the late night campfire jokes that are standard amongst soldiers of, you know, like girls and adventure in the same things and fast cars that like are exciting for everyone who's, you know, 16 to 30 men male, like this is pretty basic. And they could those things latch on are useful everywhere, and they were great at it.

Pete Turner  17:37  
So let's talk about identifying what an S fab soldier could be or should be like, how do you look around that pool? I mean, you take volunteers coming in, but you have a screening process. But, you know, this is this is a unique job. And I think you and I would say it's maybe among the hardest things you can do in the military service, because there just isn't a lot of dedicated doctrine. I mean, you're sort of Forced to invent your own way of doing this. So we don't have the institutional knowledge yet, we want to say that we do. But let's be honest, you and I have seen too many units come through, and it's just not there. And let's I want to paint this part of the picture. Think about pre deployment training, to go in and do a job. Like if you're an artillery man, and you know, your lieutenant. And that's what you've trained the last five years to go do, you get to deploy and your job is now to sit across from our rocky general and try to advise them and you've had minutes comparison hours of training that aren't even necessarily on topic. And you're supposed to perform in your you know, from minute one all the way through until month 12 or however long you therefore, and it's just an unrealistic expectation, which makes this this transformation into a professional, less fat very difficult, because there's a lot of ways to do this right and wrong, and they're often the same way.

Bill Mankins  18:55  
Yeah, yeah. I would just say this as fab, what problem is it designed to solve? And I, I'm not 100% clear. Exactly what to the level of detail. And I would like what that is, I think part of that's just because it's, it's, it's new. And so it's evolving. And then for the purposes of evolving, there was a general realization of, Hey, we need people to train foreign people. And so let's get a cadre together that can kind of be focused on that. But that's so General, that you can always be able to claim success or always be able to claim failure because you can always do something within that window. So is it designed for conventional military units to can train foreign counterpart units have exactly the same type of milk? So and then, well, then what kind of countries right, are we talking Western countries like Germany or other NATO countries, skill sets, so to speak, it's a whole different kind of you're talking about going to say Cambodia or Auto preset or some other, you know, more different place, and others are you what are you training in? Are you training again massive, you know, sort of BCT size units and tactics, are you training into those soldiers and just sort of like shoot, move and communicate and basic squad or platoon level. And I would argue that the kinds of skills that you need no different than doing it here are very different depending or have additional components to them, depending on what they're doing. So I say, let's say depends on the mission, and I'm not quite, you know, I've seen the big everything from Hey, we're going to train any kind of foreign unit to on the website at saying, you know, in terms of, if there's a draft or some kind of massive increase that they'll end up training our own forces in order to, you know, quickly expand as additional cadre here, for example. So, if the goal then is we're going to create a basically a professional training force Then the question becomes with all this with personnel and recruiting and everything else is what? How did he get good teachers, and what makes a good teacher. And a good teacher is different as sometimes in a good do. And I think that's something just as a basic point, that this isn't just the military, this is all walks of life. But organizations tend to not do this well, which is realized there's a very big difference between being great at something and being able to teach that thing. We've all had that teacher in school that might have been an absolute genius. In fact, oftentimes, the best geniuses are the worst teachers, because they didn't struggle with it and therefore don't know how to explain it articulate the material because they were always just like solid ad. So so it is a Tuesday. One, understanding the difference between being an expert and being a great teacher. And if you can get those in the same person, that's great. Usually they are not. They're two different things. And the second is anything like this is a systematic thing where basically the recruiting system for how you get the people you want the training things of how do you then get those people off the street up to speed in things you want the promotion system for how they're going to get promoted and how they're going to compensate you because you might get technical experts who are really good and need additional compensation, but rank wise, they might not get said promotion. Right. And so, and then how do you recognize them via various again, badging components? Or how do you get recognized within this new kind of thing of being a geek and you're not going to get combat time like other people, and the system has to be able to recognize that otherwise, people are going to lose people and lose motivation and it's not going to go well to retain good talent like any organization,

Pete Turner  22:48  
when you look at the skills required. What comes to mind in terms of, you know, if bill got a chance to say yes, pass a minimum PT test But really for reals, this is what we want. How important is language capacity? How important is you know, I mean, there's there's not a good spy test, but you need that ability to have that conversation. So what's the gift of gab test? What are the things that you want to see?

Bill Mankins  23:18  
There's a lot, a couple things. One, you have to have the capacity and desire basically to want to work with, in this case, foreign people. So if you're going to be a teacher, or any kind of you gotta actively have your passion be the development of people and you have to get gratification and be mode intrinsically motivated by helping other people develop. And so if you don't have that, you could be a technical expert and a whiz bang and be the best there ever is at sniping or ballistics or whatever the task is. But if just been great at the thing is your motivation, then you'll just be an expert at the thing. You won't be great teacher. And so, for teaching and in this case teaching foreigners, you need two things. One is you need to have a passion and a desire to live with and among foreigners and to gain to have a desire to want to get excited by and be motivated from developing people, period. If you don't have one of those is good, but neither is sufficient unless you have the combination. And there's other things on top of that, but those two are just absolutely huge. You could be a PT stud and you can be an excellent, you know, again, badass door kicker. Great. So your greatest CAD guy that's ever lived in the world, but that doesn't mean you're good teacher of it. These are two very different things.

Pete Turner  24:44  
I would add a couple things to your list. And one of them is sort of an overarching thing and that's cultural capacity test for CQ

Bill Mankins  24:52  
Yeah, CQ is huge. Yep. Right. And if you don't have

Pete Turner  24:55  
to understand CQ then and if we get stuck at EQ And that's all we know about, we have to have professional capacity to test and measure and evaluate CQ. And the other thing is is can you build trust based on a design and and that's done Robin jack has written the book. He found the principles, I found them independently. And we talk all the time about the ability to reliably build trust with someone. And it's a different.

Bill Mankins  25:25  
Yeah, it's a

Pete Turner  25:27  
Yeah. So let's talk about that the ability to build reliable trust. What are your thoughts?

Bill Mankins  25:31  
Well, Trust is everything. So it doesn't matter what you're doing. If you have other people that you're trying to work with much less through, you know, they'll only do for you to the level of their trust. That's that is leadership one on one. So if you're going to ask people to do something they'll only do is what they trust you to do and when there's pressure or intense situations, and a lot of times, we're talking about training people in places where there's you know, The indigenous personnel will attack us soldiers, in this case in Afghanistan and others. So that level of trust and constantly having to build this, you know, huge. And so there is definitely personality, I would say. So this is where it kind of gets debated right upon one, how do you identify are one of the things but I would just say the personality, there's been things that are taught, there's certain things that can be taught the degree to which certain things can be taught and vary. And there's some things that just really like, different people have a kind of a top out at a certain level, and they can't get beyond that because their raw capacity doesn't go beyond that. And I would say this, there's, I do think that there's to some degree, you know, personality attributes and psychological profiles that lend themselves better to this than others. And I'm not talking about and this is where a lot of these psych tests or whatnot, you see the website, they got the screen and I have no idea. So to be clear, I have no idea what that particular psychological stuff It consists of as a rule, though, I've been. So for example, before I went into buds, they had a basic screen and make sure you weren't effectively a serial killer. And it was like, did you know? Did you burn dogs as a child? And is this kind of thing? Yeah, well, two things. One, everybody knows the answer to that should be no. Right? So the test doesn't actually catch what it's supposed to catch per se. Right? And to even if you it just doesn't catch it, it's supposed to test and so the question here is, you know, what are the attributes psychologically, that makeup up the kind of person who can deal with foreigners and deal get trust and enjoys teaching other folks and really be good at at CQ, the cultural intelligence, and there's definitely some proven tested, you know, attributes in that field and that's a component of psychological assessments that's well grounded in academia, and the radically.

Pete Turner  28:03  
Okay. And then when you talk about the ability to Okay, so let's back up. So in terms of trust, is it possible to build a systematic institutional way? Because, you know, as a guy that's, I learned this, like you said earlier, by making a lot of mistakes and watching mistakes and saying, Don't do that. Don't do that shut up more. Pay attention to Body Body language. Hey, how about this one bill, this is gonna be crazy. When you want to meet with somebody set an appointment with the person is important. Don't just show up unannounced and sit on the gas for five hours, right, like, have things and that for me, allowed me to exchange a little bit of low risk trust with them until we got to the point where I could ride around in their car safe as can be because I was protected by the culture around them and what they assured Yeah.

Bill Mankins  28:53  
Yeah, I mean, I do think these things. So for example, I mean, the body language one you mentioned, there's certain components of these things. of building trust. So, I mean, you could break down, you know, trust into its own components, which we could do later if you want. But you know how someone's physiology Telegraph's their themselves and then your capacity to respond to that and get them in a comfortable position. It's useful, it's useful everything in life. And frankly, a lot of these things, ironically, are something that I think just humans should know. And be taught and trained like everywhere not just in these units but you know specific them the body language is one. There are certain things about just in general in CQ training and development of a Dave Livermore does a lot of this stuff. And is, of course, is the social distance, for example. How well everything from physical distance so we've all gone to Well, maybe we haven't, you go to certain countries, and there's lots of distance in space physically, animals in orderly and people are conditioned and trained to to respond in that way. If you get really close to someone, in a lot of other cultures, they're that social distance. physical distance, such as social has different lengths. So when someone gets three inches from you, in line and actually touches you in the United States, that's like, a no go. I mean, you're cramped in my space. Yeah. What are you doing? You turn around, you know, people will look at you. You do that in Latin America, certain parts of Latin America, we're certainly. And in Southeast Asia, it's like, there's no sense of of line and people will just crowd in. If you aren't, if there's a gap, someone will fill it, even if that's a three inch gap, they'll fill it and cut in line and basically it would we would interpret as cut line, they would not think of it as cutting in line and think of it differently. So there's these things about distance and that then we're not even talking about social space, such as physical that you know how people

Pete Turner  30:53  
if you want to think about it as axes or dimensions. Hey, this is Pete a Turner from lions rock productions week. Rate podcasts around here and if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast just talk to me I'll give you the advice on the right gear the best plan and show you how to take a podcast that makes sense for you that's sustainable that's scalable and fun hit me up at Pete at breakdown show calm Let me help I want to hear about it.

Bill Mankins  31:18  
If you want to think about it as as axes or dimensions that all cultures have there's these maybe seven or eight dimensions that if you understand those dimensions, you really begin to to place your own on a spectrum and others on a spectrum and then you realize how you want to to interact like is it okay or not to display emotion and which emotions like can you you know, some cultures PDA is not in a public affection is not a problem affection is an okay thing to display publicly and others it is absolutely not. And some, you know, anger if you lose your temper and you get upset, it's a sign of weakness as opposed to Not being honest, right? Because you lot you, you duplin are able to retain control of yourself. And the control is the ultimate value. And so when you look at those, I do think there's things that we can absolutely, systematically train and evaluate to improve people's capacity on the training side. Simultaneously, I think there's some things on the certain people will, like anything in life, there's people have capacities, then even if we have a systematic structural training, that's perfect. Not all people are able to be true, will have the same results after training, no different than physical conditioning, right? You have some natural bracketing limits that are different by different people. And then identifying those and saying what, what attributes do really, really well at this training and are really kind of attuned to it is key, key to efficiency. Otherwise, you're going to do This meat grinder thing, which is what, you know, historically, organizations have done which is we let everybody come in, we just grind it through the meat grinder and we see is left standing. Well, you can do that with some physical things and boot camp like this kind of stuff is financially and efficiently. It's just not efficient to do it that way.

Pete Turner  33:21  
Yeah, well in the in the in the combat environment the AO doesn't tolerate you know, you'll be combat ineffective think you've won. And this has happened the last you know 1520 years and and walk away like thinking you're a champion and because you never go back to see your failure. You're left with this perception of skill and quality. When in reality there's, there's a bunch of people because I've stayed. I've watched the people leave and think that they won, here's our legacy and literally watch the next unit piss on their legacy. You know, and so, so let's, let's caution the ASVAB folks like this is very, very hard And if you're going to go in an area once that's it, you know, you build these relationships, it's probably advisable to go back. But let's stay in the cultural point for a minute and then we're going to get on to the next little part here. In terms of understanding culture, what we do currently is try to seek to not offend. And we have the same training that we had 100 years ago and it's simple things like don't use your left hand when you eat in Arabic Islamic towel country, which I asked about because that's that's how I learned to you know, maximize CQ I asked, you know, and they're like, Hey, we know that you're from America and you guys use utensils and that you don't care about that so you do what you need to do it doesn't bother us you know, I had I asked about Ramadan like you know, should we be drinking in front of you guys and the guy basically said why don't we just do whiskey shots right now during the day during Ramadan because we don't give a damn about that around here. We we like to and so he proved the point to me that you can't out Iraq in Iraqi you can't out Afghan, an Afghan So don't try to be them. And Matter of fact, be yourself and then work to evolve to a place that's closer to them and use that path as a means of closing the gap between you and your partner. How did I do?

Bill Mankins  35:12  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I completely agree with you. And, as you say, you can't Iraq in Iraq. Yeah. It. I mean, asking is the key. I think most places almost, I don't know, I can't think of a culture that I've been to where asking and inquiring doesn't, doesn't get your points. I mean, here's the thing people can unsend authenticity, everybody can write and when you're authentically inquiring and wanting to to be there and wanting to help people like that comes through and people will give you slack. And if you're asked people are usually willing to give you a heads up on Yeah, what's the protocol or what you should be doing? Or like you say, in this case, with the call, there's like, yeah, there's a general thing. This is what we do, but this is what we believe, but here's what we actually Do that can be different. And then on the Congress side of that, there's things where, you know, well, we in this culture can do that, but you cannot, right. So the easy one to display for Americans to see with this is we all have things that the in groups allowed to say that the other ones not. So, you know, black rappers using using the N word in a lyric, or amongst themselves, not acceptable is acceptable. Someone else who's not a black American saying that would be unacceptable. And so the in group has an authority to do something and a capacity to do something that they don't allow the outsider to do. And in fact, we take great offense to so you know, asking what those things are, what conditions can you do this what conditions you know, do that mean, you got to learn that lay of the land? And that's the tricky part about we're learning about cultures, I suppose, as opposed to a specific culture is useful, right? And I think both of them are useful. But the one is absolutely necessary, which is learning how to interact with any culture, which is learning how to understand and interact with difference is a skill set and of itself. And then that's a baseline, like everyone should have that as core. And then it's a matter of, Okay, how do you go with specific culture and learn about that one or dive super deep into that history or that politics or that, you know, religious entity,

Pete Turner  37:29  
that those are the that's the icing on the cake, right? But again, don't fall into the trap of out out say, Boy, if so, I would commonly tell my interpreter like, Hey, I'm gonna ask questions, you know, I know the answer to but I'm asking them, you know, like, tell me about Ramadan. And then my interpreter would look at me like you know about Ramadan and like, ask the question, because I'm trying to use what I know about the culture to my advantage to be curious and get that person to, because once I say, hey, wait, I you I heard that was kind of a weak school, you're gonna come back at me with an answer automatically. You know, you're compelled to because it's part of your culture. And I don't think that just for the record, yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about indiv. And a lot of this stuff kind of bleeds right into what we're about to talk about. Let's talk about, you know, I always say I don't care if you're trans, I don't care if you're gay, I don't care if you're from the moon, either. If you're a pro or willing to become one, you can roll with me on a patrol. What is someone who's in an S fab or who wants to be in an S AP? What are some of the critical things you would want them to put together so that they're not just marketable to the military so that they can get the job, but so that they're proficient, as proficient as they can, because I can tell you all the pre combat training I ever had as a whole, and it's a lot of pre combat training. I would say less than 15% of it was relevant to my day to day tasks.

Bill Mankins  38:54  
Yeah, isn't that shocking? It's so true. You know, it's funny about the movie. Being back up further, I would not have believed that. to that degree, I would not have believed that until I was in combat and worse. Oh, yeah. And seeing that on on a daily basis, I would have assumed that the ratio and proportions have been different. And I would have thought it would have been more like 5050 as opposed to 2010. Right. And a lot of those, yeah, that it would just be different. I'll leave it at that. So, you know, what are the what are the use of somebody before they got in or had this kind of job would be useful to

Pete Turner  39:38  
Aaron, if they're in like, Okay, I'm here. There's not a lot of doctrine, because let's be honest, there's not a lot of doctrine. There's a lot of training that exists, but how do I become a pro? What is what is a pro? Yeah, what do they have a command of?

Bill Mankins  39:52  
Well, I mean, at the very base, you need to have a knowledge of what it is you're teaching. So that's a given. I'm not going to talk about that. So that we're talking about The capacity to communicate interact. So, I would say, god this is so where do we even begin? We'll start small. Right? So, so So when you look at and you look at, say, How do I interact with someone? How do I know what's going on? So had, you have a couple things, so you have your communicate with them verbally. So that's either through an interpreter or it's through direct speech, if you know the actual language, or communicate with your own body, right. And that, largely something that's kind of primal, and it's the same everywhere. And some of that's culture specific, where this gesture in this place means this and this one means that but for the most part, it's universal. And then you've got your capacity to read the other person, again, their body language. And so in that communication, just there's ways and training blocks that can be done to help people come in Cait That is to say, give the signs that you want to give physically and verbally through an interpreter or directly. And then there's things you can do on a reading standpoint, to understand what the other is communicating verbally or physically. So interpreter operations would fall under nice kind of that was framed frameworks, right? violin which would also fall under those kind of things for language training, but not just language training in a general sense language training in terms of and I don't mean linguistics in a purely like academic sense. I mean, like an operational linguistics a practical linguistics that is, is useful to understand relationships of like, when an interpreter gives you this word, this may or may not mean the same thing, even though it's the same word. Understanding how interpreters are even trained to understand the limitations of, of using Word for word translation, for example. So there's a couple of just conceptual things that are useful. In that communication domain, another domain might be for example, the, your capacity to interrogate I say interrogate meaning interrogative to question to extract information from an individual or to to query what's going on. And then if so, I'm really using American an example here. So the students are having trouble learning geometric, how to do a geometric proof how to, they're not conceptually getting, for example, how, how how to zero up or they don't have an arc, or they don't understand whatever it is, you can just sit there and redo the same thing over and over again. But if you explain it 100 times, the same way. Maybe they're going to get it but you really understand what what piece of this as you break it down Are you in trouble with and so the capacity to interact and extract and get someone to break down and move through the through the business breakdown of where they're having trouble is key for learning and teaching the, the skill. But again, the patience that the local have with you on that, folks. And another thing here off the cuff is is the trust part. And so trust building is a huge component of this, and how you do it. It's a lot of times patients, and there's a whole block, we go into on that, but that trust is often built on the fact almost entirely built no different than here. It's not if you're teaching someone to shoot on the range, it's taught in the evening or in the morning at the chow hall somewhere else when you're laughing joke about something we're developing some familiarity to show you care about me. Now I want to listen to what you have to say you're actually taking time out of your, your schedule above and beyond show me what I'm not getting. These trust things are huge.

Pete Turner  43:46  
Yeah, I will not,

Bill Mankins  43:48  
especially when you're especially when you're doing really dangerous things. I mean, it's one thing in a sense, right when you're trusting, again, the algebra proof, okay, if this clown doesn't want to do it, or I can go get my training somewhere. As a teacher, if I don't like this teacher and they don't care about me, they won't answer my questions. I can, I can YouTube that stuff, right? At least today. But when someone's shooting a gun or throwing a grenade by your head, like that level of trust across culture is a big, big deal. We're going to go from sim rounds to live ammunition shoot here. Whoa,

Pete Turner  44:21  
yeah, big deal.

Bill Mankins  44:23  
rust.

Pete Turner  44:24  
So I'll put an anecdote in here to kind of illustrate that I was in Iraq with another unit and a lieutenant was going in and we were gonna go kind of later in the day, trying something different. And he was getting engaged and he had a list of things he needed to accomplish from his battalion commander. And we get there and it's the Arab cup and they're playing soccer. And everybody there in the in the Iraqi army is watching, you know, because Iraq is playing I don't know UAE or somebody, right? And he's like, okay, hey, Mohammed, we need to get to work done. I smacked him and I'm like, Hey, why don't we watch the soccer game? You know? Because I know it seems shocking. But nobody in that room wanted to do work at that moment, you can compel that person to do work for sure. But isn't it better to sit there and maybe even take a longer time and watch a whole game, ask about the game, learn about a rocky soccer and make that day about that. Because far too many times, and this is for the ASVAB folks who are listening, I heard and I know you all have thought and said this. My boss wants this. Fuck that. Don't do that. It's not about your boss. You have to work from the point of the person you were advising has a goal. You have to understand what their goals are. And if you don't, then you can doesn't matter what your boss wants, you won't accomplish it. There'll be a so there's three negative outcomes from cultural interaction. And there's a positive one called collaboration. And there's three negative ones. One is incompetence. One is passive aggressive behavior, and one is corruption. If you see those three things, it's on you as the fab member to figure out how are you not aligning culturally, you don't understand their goals, and you don't understand their decision making process. If you can think in that term. Now you have a chance to do these things. They're not going like they want to watch soccer. It's like coming to someone's house in the Superbowl and saying, hey, let's go do work. But my Niners are playing. Oh, yeah. Anyhow, let's go do work. It's foolish, foolhardy. So we have to take these this boss driven, you know, here's what we're doing today. Here's what we're doing today. And we have to get away from that if we're going to be really talented as fat people, we have to say today is a day when we build rapport, and that's still a win. They're all small wins. But if I can really build that trust, where the person's like, Hey, thanks for letting me watch the game. I know you have things you have to do for your commander. Let's get those done. Now. Then That's the golden path, because now that person is going to run with you on a path that's much more comfortable than just compelling them to do something.

Bill Mankins  47:07  
Yeah. That's the love that I love the soccer example. I mean, it's it's spot on. There's so many times when, you know, hmm, you could relate to a dating or anything else, right? Where you're trying to develop a relationship effectively with a group of people to gain trust. And in order to do that, sometimes you've got to go to the ballet that you don't really want to go listen, and by God, the Nutcracker, I hate this every year, but I do it because my partner likes it. And I know they like it. And I know they'll appreciate it if I do it. Right. And that's part of it is a million examples of that.

Pete Turner  47:45  
Yeah, and I guess, you know, kind of the rule of thumb, the lens that I would want an S fab person to develop is, am I the smartest person in this room? Okay, then I've got to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Am I the most important person in this room? Am I the only one getting what they want in this room? And if those three things at all are true, you need to stop, slow down and reassess. Now, if your partner is coming to you for advice, like, I knew I was doing my job well, when the Iraqi General said, Where is my advisor, I need to ask him about how to run my thing. And he asked for me by name, I became his advisor on get this a rocky culture. Yeah, when you're advising in a rocky, on culture in their own country, you're you're doing it right, because you're trying to be the wisest person in the room, which means you have to shut up a lot. Listen, ask questions, and not impose yourself. If you impose yourself you will be absolutely obsolete within minutes, and you'll never know it.

Bill Mankins  48:44  
Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely right.

Pete Turner  48:51  
We've seen it too many times. And I should say I want to soften this up a bit. We're seeing this from experience, our own personal direct experience that we've done this ourselves. And also we've seen what the training produces and the training. You know, we've done our best, but what we're trying to do is better now. And so these are the people that taking on this impossible mission, it's delicate, it's deliberate, it's built on failure, like that is that is how hard this stuff is. And you have to be as an S fab, you know, tactician, you have to be willing to accept that, that today. The wind might be just going for a walk with your partner, get them out of the office, reset their head, reset your head, and just get them to tell you stories or something, whatever it is, but you don't have to accomplish everything on the paper that day. Matter of fact, if you are, you're probably doing the wrong thing. Because again, you're more important than what that moment needs. And you know, I'm a big believer in this bill, but an effect is greater than effect. And if you can't take that then spend time understanding why that's true, because you will absolutely absolutely Be combat ineffective as an S fat person if you cannot understand effect beats effect.

Bill Mankins  50:06  
Yeah, it's vital. I noticed on that. I don't know if you're familiar with this. Well, I'm let me ask you this, I noticed because you may know this. If there's people listening to this, I'm curious. So, so the issue is on recruiting. So on the website, it says you have to already be in the military in order to go so there's no there's no pipeline right now, as I can see on the description to take like the 18 X ray, where Hey, so for a long time, SF was one of these things Special Forces is one of these things where you had to be in and you had to go you know, be on I think a V five be in for a minimum, I think five years also before you could even begin to screen for Special Forces because it was believed to be you know, advanced, which it is and not only specialized, but advanced which is the key distinction and That, too, a lot of people didn't like it. But a lot of people did where there was a pipeline that was created called 18. x ray, that allowed people to get a contract off the street if they met certain requirements to have a direct opportunity to screen and go into the to the unit. One of the trade offs is when you're looking, because what they what they basically said was we're looking for a highly specialized person. And is there a way we can identify that person before that five year experience and attract them because with a lot of people that will, particularly in that community would only want to go in the military, if they were doing Special Operations? Like if you told me I had to go into the Navy for four years, and then I could get a contract for buds maybe? I would have said, Absolutely not. The risk reward is just not it's No. Now if you told me, you may or may not like the you may be stuck in the Navy if you fail or you quit, but I would no desire to serve in the Navy, I desire to be a seal. Those are two very different things. Think about it in a business sense if someone said, Hey, you can work at Google. Now, sign up to work five years at Google. Now there's no guarantee you might be the janitor, or you might be the marketing guy. Or you might be the, you know, the coder over here on this particular project, or you may be cleaning toilets. Who knows, we'll see. Like that. Nobody does. I mean, it would be crazy. So the idea in general is creating too, if you want to attract it, if what you believe is a certain narrow person is attracted to this. And that kind of person isn't in the group as readily. that's available, then you create a direct pipeline to try to attract that kind of person. And based off of what I see on website, and this is only based off what I see. So keep that in mind. This could be completely wrong with based off the current as a de army website. It says you must be already in ASVAB units or open only to currently serving Army soldiers. I get why that started that way. It'll be interesting to see if it evolves to As they figure out the profile person, I think there's a way to make that much more tailored, and to make being very directly quickly bring in people who can. Because look, you can send people to advanced shooting houses and do all kinds of things and get people tactically way up to speed very fast, right? These are skills that take development, teaching, and if you want educators and you want people to be a teaching cadre like that is again a very particular kind of person that I would argue, and people who make great teachers, which is what you're wanting here are identifiable and could be fast tracked and quickly got up to speed. I mean, it says they do the remedial training here and other stuff for like medicine, everything else. So everybody's already getting basically land nav and up to speed. So if you're already doing all this, retrain stuff, I mean, my gosh, if SF itself, special forces can do it. As fab can can do it.

Pete Turner  53:54  
Yeah. Let me make a point here with this too, and I'm trying to be fair when I do This but this illustrates the greater problem. Nearly every operator I've talked to has said this, there's one exception. And this is dozens of operators, including myself. We've all had more conversations in combat zones that we fire bullets out of our gun. Definitely. And so when we look at that, we start to understand a couple of things. And I want you to expand on this once I'm done. I've never been asked to do a push up in combat. I've never been asked to perform the two mile run or pull ups, none of that stuff. The reason why I was excellent at what, what, what I did was that I was there a lot. I made a lot of mistakes, I'll watch other people make mistakes. And I just I outwork the problems that were in front of me, it had nothing to do with my physical capability. I had to push myself I worked 1620 hour days all the time. But physical fitness testing has a very low correlation to what a good s fab soldier might be. I'm not saying that you shouldn't meet a minimum standard. I'm not saying being super fit is not a good quality, but it doesn't correlate well. And the other thing is, is if you were gonna ask me what's more important my ability to read a map, or my ability to work an interpreter, fuck that map. I don't need to read I don't need to do Llandaff course I don't need any of that stuff. Yeah, in part because my ability to work in interpreter far exceeds the capability of holding a paper an obsolete paper map in my hand. Now, do you need to have someone there that can read a mountain fine. It's like having a combat medic used to only need one or two in a unit and you'd be fine. Fine, someone needs to have a backup plan or reading a map and not everybody. So any hours spent doing that you could trade that for the ability to work an interpreter. It's severe. But here's the ask me how many times I had to read a map in a combat zone. It's it's none. Maybe I pulled a map out and showed an Iraqi who could read a map. You know, help me find something on a map. But that's not what you do land map for that. is a different principle. What are your thoughts? Can you expand on that? And hey, if you disagree, that's fine, too.

Bill Mankins  56:07  
In general, I agree I might disagree. But it really depends on the specific specificity what's being done. So for example, if you're training Moroccans to do land nav, then you need to know well enough, right? And and be able to do it well. So it depends on what's being trained. And I guess this goes back to the question of the nature of the actual mission of what they're doing and what's being trained, meaning what are we training others to do? And for the skill of teaching and training of foreign army, or your foreign counterpart, the skill is actually teaching and training unit, you're doing medical training and a component of that, then sure you got to be proficient in that. If you're teaching people work on juice, then that's what you need to be able to do. So if land nav is a component of the training curriculum, That we're teaching foreign students than it needs to be a bar of bar that needs to be cleared. If it's not, then it's kind of a no, I agree with you about the push up thing and everything else. I mean, I'm a fitness fanatic, and absolutely love, PT and all that kind of stuff. Always have, at the same time. Unless you're scaling, caving ladders and climbing ships and doing like very certain kinds of stuff, that you never really use most of it anyway. It's designed for something different, which goes back to my other statement about, you know, what do you need, and what are you measuring? And then what do you use for training. So for example, training attention to detail, or identifying whether someone really wants to be there and evaluating someone's willpower. You're not actually evaluating their pull ups or push ups in this case or their running capacity, what you're evaluating is their capacity to endure. And this is a tool in which to create pain to see how long someone can endure. But in addition itself, it's kind of I mean, there's other ways you could do it too, right? We could have someone standing their hands upside down and and see how long they can take that. I mean, there's an infinite number of things you can come up with. So, you know, the real thing is being, I would argues, coming up with a matrix, so to speak, of, what does someone need to do actually do for this job? then the question becomes, what kind of things we can do to measure that? And what's the unit of measure for that thing? And so, I don't know. I might disagree with what you said or I might not depends on what's being trained. I'm anxious to actually learn a little bit more because kind of some of this has been a little close. And I'm anxious to learn a little more about the gritty details because that's where the rubber meets the road. Again, no different than the promotion issues on the record. retention issues and you know, how the units are designed and mobilized and maintained. I mean, you have an army promotion works if you don't have military in general, like if you don't hit certain wickets, you don't advance to give a parallel for example, the Navy redid a thing several years ago because seals were didn't have their own way the Navy's rate. So it's MLS and other other units. And so you had to like if I was a torpedo man, I had to maintain all of my torpedo knowledge in order to make the next rank and take that annual test, even if I never touched the torpedo in my life because I was a seal. And eventually, that became a big problem because guys couldn't advance You know, they're amazing because they're basically it's like, you know, if my job is air traffic control, but what I do over here is radar, or radar, some of the until the torpedo man, like I can't maintain both of those very well, right. So they redesigned it and I think that's something that's going to be interesting with the way the personnel system and all systems integrators is, you know, how people will be evaluated and promoted when their their scope score, their core component is not, for example, is that going to be considered, you know, a deployment? Or is it combat time is going to be considered way the same way if someone's actually, you know, in a standard infantry unit versus in an S fab when it comes to promotion? And will they move back and forth between the two? Or do you become a specialized in that particular things you're like a professional cadre versus versus not, you know, you're going to get which developing you do a couple times of going abroad or two or three and training again, and rockin, you know, infantry with Thai and then the next thing you know, you're over doing the same thing in Indonesia, and then you're doing it in the Philippines and you've now got three of these experiences. Do you rotate out and go to the regular infantry? And if you do, as well as you did before you stay in it? Yeah. There's no there's no Is there a way to leave what happens you get in there and you don't like it? Like, how does that work? I don't believe

Pete Turner  1:01:05  
you're gonna make sure they can have mustaches and beards and stuff just yet. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to I wanted to clarify a little something. Yes, of course, like if your job is shooting, Orlando having, I'm just talking about like our passion for land nav as a discriminator. In leadership in the army, you go through your school, and you have to do your land. Now, of course, those things are fine. You know, like, it's just an example of, we do this skill that we rarely ever, if ever use in a practical sense. We test on it and the ability to work a map, you know, of course has a place it's a very traditional military value. But if you're going to talk with an interpreter as the main part of your job in the most dangerous places on e arth,

Bill Mankins  1:01:48  
yeah, 

Pete Turner  1:01:48  
but the most flex environment, cross culture, cross international cross religion, cross all these multiple crosses, Omni crosses, then I want you to have every capacity you can to talk awk and to build trust and to grow a mustache, and to figure out how to blend in, no matter what country you find yourself in, or what district you're from, I mean, think about if you divided America into districts, you know, how many how different it would be placed the place, we're talking about that you need a person that can go into North Eastern Maine, as far away as you can be from San Diego, and yet still go and converse in Lubbock, Texas, and and make friends in a different language in a different religion in an area that's not permissive. All of those things so yeah, map map reading is important. Treat teach and train on it but understand the mountain of stuff you have to master to be able to do s fab work effectively.

Bill Mankins  1:02:49  
And you know, if there's if there's a there's a training school for it, I know that but is there a designator for it

Pete Turner  1:02:59  
now I don't know what the final answer was it

Bill Mankins  1:03:01  
is it isn't actually. It's become an MLS like, you know, whatever, golf or some other kind of

Pete Turner  1:03:12  
I know you transition so I imagined it is an MLS. I don't know the final answer on that the last time I was talking to somebody about it was was a while back and I've got some interview setup with some s fab people. So I'll find out but I don't know specifically, I want to ask you this so we can wrap this up. Yeah, if there was one book, in the vein of what you're talking about in terms of making yourself a good s fab warrior. What's one book that you would recom mend?

Bill Mankins  1:03:40  
The Impossible question. Um, that's a really hard question. You know, it's fun. You know, it's funny, I'll say there's a couple that it's hard to cope with full. But Dave Navarro his book on but reading body language, He's phenomenal. He's

Pete Turner  1:04:01  
an ex FBI guy. Dave Navarro plays guitar. Joe Navarro. I'm

Bill Mankins  1:04:05  
sorry, Josh. Thank you that 40 and slip if Joe Navarro, thank you. Okay, so

Pete Turner  1:04:10  
save that battle. That's a perfect. I love it.

Bill Mankins  1:04:18  
Yeah, Joe Navarro has a great book on body language. He's a ex FBI guy. There's Dave Livermore, once a book, one book.

Pete Turner  1:04:34  
I'm gonna say mine.

Bill Mankins  1:04:35  
Yeah, you got a look.

Pete Turner  1:04:37  
So in terms of this kind of skill set to become a professional s fab person, if you don't have a command of Robin Drake's book on it called the code of trust. If you don't have a command of that material, I can't take you seriously, as an S fab warrior. You must have that capacity in your magazine of skills. It's essential, it's compulsory. Can I make this See, the more clear, you have to understand Robin Drake's work on building trust.

Bill Mankins  1:05:05  
Yeah, so there's many, but I'll just say one off the top of my head. And that's Jonah Barros book on reading body language. He's an FBI, Intel guy. And it's a phenomenal book.

Pete Turner  1:05:18  
Yeah, I've read that book. You're right. And it changed how I saw body language doesn't mean that I'm a master at it. But I understand when there's in congruence, and it slows me down and I look for what did I miss? It's a great book I totally agree with I totally agree with you on that. Anything you want to say in closing,

Bill Mankins  1:05:35  
I'm, I'm really just excited to see a that it's encouraging that this through. I mean, it's a pretty amazing thing when something like this gets through the bureaucracy. And so the idea that the army stepped up and did it, I think is huge. I think it's gonna be interesting to see how the military the the Army's new talent management system addresses this. Because I think that's a key component. This is they've completely revamped how they do talent, acquisition management as talent as opposed to the traditional way it's been done, and how those two interface is going to be big. And then the last thing I guess, to leave with it is I'm really, really, really interested in how they're going to look on the front end of assessment and selection for the personnel there to match what they're actually doing. And, and how those advances get structured, again, through things like an 18 extra equivalent, for example, to bring people in the outside in ways that they come compensates and deal with promotion internally and in the schoolhouse, whatever that however, that is if it's going to be an actual separate MLS, or if it's additional designator like again, an 18 I don't know Mike or something that they think Throw in the end to designate a separate component for that. But those things have massive ramifications on the success of it. And so it's exciting to see.

Pete Turner  1:07:13  
See this evolve? Yeah, I'm excited about it too. And the reason why we're putting this together just again, and I'll do a disclaimer up front, but whatever I understand, we don't need to be critical, we mean to be helpful, meaning we need to be professional. And so when we say these things, we're coming from a place of experience, and knowledge. And we're trying to help guide like this is these are some areas where you need to focus because otherwise you're left to your own devices. And if you don't have the experience that we have, we want to share that. So understand our intention is to illustrate some of these areas where these are critical things that you have to have a mastery of and if you don't, you still have to have a mastery of it. So what happens is, it's like being a mechanic and you you don't know how to use a socket wrench, you know, or you can't you can't you know Figure out metrics and standard measurements, you just have to have that knowledge if you're gonna do that every day.

Bill Mankins  1:08:06  
And well on that, I guess the last thing I'll comment on there is, is the standards. So just, you know, what, what, what if make a five level or one through 10 whatever it is, you know, to be an 11 Bravo to get out of the schoolhouse means you have to have this standard. So, you know, everybody the 11 Bibles, you know, MLS has this, but then the difference between that and sort of your next tier can be huge. Yeah. Right. And what are those differences and so, to me, part of this is okay with to use, use your example of the skill that can be done there medical train, no debate, the tactical training we do, there's different levels of skill, you know, do you make fast roping for example, in our modern way of combat part of the basic infantry training, in you know, in the ways that for example, airborne training used to be Super exotic and now it's relatively integrated in common or getting going through Ranger School for example, do you? At what point do you want the new basic to incorporate what so what's your gonna be your baseline that everyone has? And I think with a lot of these things with s fab is particularly interesting, because they're talking about a lot of skills and skill sets, that are those combinations are less common. And so figuring out what that baseline is going to be that you want the entire unit to have. And then what's going to be advanced, intermediate and advanced ASVAB training, because you have that full spectrum and where are you going to draw the lines for how long the school is going to be? And what what are we going to decide is good enough at the minimum? And I think that's a really important question. Because I think it would be really easy to say, oh, a couple days in this and could be so far below what the minimum should be that you're not getting anywhere, but then also the follow on right so if you've been in as fab for, let's say, like, like, no different tests. Right. There's one other thing there's there's advanced schools that you have once you have the basics in that thing. But where are those lines? Well, it's the bracketing.

Pete Turner  1:10:08  
Well, listen, man, I appreciate you lending your expertise to this project. Hopefully the folks listening who aren't as fat people found it interesting. I know that what you do is important. How do folks find you with a maintenance research or where do they go?

Bill Mankins  1:10:22  
Yeah, you can go to our website maintenance research. org, or you can just email me. I said, Americans research.org Find me on LinkedIn. You can find me pretty much anywhere.

Pete Turner  1:10:32  
Just All right. Thank you, man. So much.