The Dip

Recently, Seth Godin published a book called The Dip which is about concentrating only on the things you can be the best at, and pushing through the obstacles to make it happen.

If you’ve been following my posts on creating expertise, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Noticeable ability, though, is easy to develop. It may take hundreds of hours, not thousands. So, the difference between the hundreds of hours to become good at something and the 10,000 hours to become great at it is a dip.

Seth posted a manifesto about his book, The Dip, on Changthis.com. Here are a couple of quotes from the manifesto:

The reason that being the best in the world is worth so much is that so few can do it. Scarcity carries a premium.

The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. A long slog that’s actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.

The Dip is the combination of bureaucracy and busywork you must deal with in order to get certified in scuba diving.

The Dip is the difference between easy “beginner” technique and the more useful expert approach in skiing or fashion design.

The Dip is the long stretch between beginner’s luck and real accomplishment.

The Dip is the set of artificial screens set up to keep people like you out.

I recommend that you read the manifesto when you get the chance. It’s free. You can download a PDF from the following link:

The Dip Manifesto

Here is a link to Seth’s lens for more information on the book:

The Dip Lens

Just knowing that the dip is out there will help you prepare for it and confront it. Becoming an expert requires confronting the dip. It’s not easy, and it’s not supposed to be — that’s what creates the scarcity. That is what will make you the best.

Some of the OCS designs

Here are a couple more designs from OCS. The officer candidates wear these shirts for their field meet. In addition to trying to win the events and the meet, the platoons all try to out-motivate, and out-gunge each other. That sentiment is evident even in the shirts.

Officer Material

The Marine Corps not only maintains its standard of excellence from one generation to the next, it magnifies it. The Marine Corps improves, because continuous improvement is a cornerstone of its ethos, and because Marines do not believe that perfection can be achieved. There is always room for improvement.

Every Marine has opinions on how the Marine Corps can be improved (just ask one). I’m no different. Recently, along with my parents, I paid a visit to a retired Marine colonel my dad served with some years ago. I listened intently as my dad and the colonel swapped sea stories — some of which I’ve been told are true — and we talked about the Marine Corps in general, including policy.

Having been enlisted myself, and convinced of the worthiness of the enlisted experience, I submitted that it might be a good idea to require officers to spend time as enlisted Marines before becoming officers. It would make the Marine Corps more meritocratic, I argued, and it would give every officer a deeper appreciation for the quality and potential of the enlisted ranks. The colonel disagreed, which surprised me since he had risen from the enlisted ranks himself. His reasoning made me reconsider my position. He gave three reasons for why we should not require enlisted service of officers:

1. Having a commissioned officer corps, recruited and trained in its current form, ensures civilian control of the military. This, the colonel surmised, has helped protect our democracy from an over militarized force that could pose a threat to the government. There are no coups in America.

2. Some intellectual people, who have the means and desire go to college out of high school, would not be interested in serving in the enlisted ranks. And, as the colonel pointed out, the Marine Corps needs these people.

3. Officer programs are available to enlisted Marines. While many Marines could not afford college before entering the Marines, those barriers no longer exist once the Marine is in active service. In this way the Marine Corps is already meritocratic. The programs are available for any Marine willing to put forth the effort regardless of previous socioeconomic status. Most of us who never served in the officer ranks just have to come to terms with the fact that we simply did not meet the requirements — not that we could not have, or that the path was closed to us — just that we didn’t.

Since we do the artwork for their platoon T-shirts, I have the honor of meeting a representative from every platoon going through OCS. My observation of OCS versus my own experience as a recruit at Parris Island is this: If you are enlisting in the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps is willing to make a substantial effort to develop you into a Marine — to shape you, and to mold you. At OCS you have to show up fitting the mold. Some fit the mold because of their upbringing or tenacity; some fit the mold because they were developed as enlisted Marines. All ways are valid as long as the high standards of becoming an officer are met.

My advice, then, for anyone who wants to be an officer of Marines is straightforward: Mold yourself into officer material. There is no reason why you can’t.

In the spirit of the post, below is one of the first designs we’re working on for Officer Candidates School:

One Team

Occasionally we get calls from the other three services asking if we’ll do artwork for their units. Because we are Marines here at the office, people from the other services seem surprised when we agree to do their unit designs. I’m all for the inter-service rivalry, but it’s all just surface fun, and when it comes down to it, I deeply admire anyone who serves in the military. My wife, after all, who comes from an Air Force family, herself served in the Navy. While my father, two brothers and I all served in the Marines, I have two uncles who served in the Army in Vietnam–one of them, my Uncle Gary, was killed in action. In WWII, one grandfather served in the Army Air Corps and the other served in the Navy, a fighting Sea Bee, who fought on Tarawa and Iwo Jima alongside Marines.

So although we Marines may make fun of the other services about the size of their biceps, and the other services will make fun of us about of the size of our vocabularies, at the end of the day we’re here for each other and we always have been.

5K Sketch

Here’s a sketch I’m working on for a 5K in Florida. There are going to be some edits to this, but I think it’s a good start.

Leadership Philosophies of Marines and Civilians

I did the following analysis for an organizational psychology class a few years back. I have not written much about the character discipline in the blog yet because much of what I believe is contained in the following articles. I am updating and republishing the paper here as a frame of reference for future discussions about the character discipline.

Part 1

Not only is the Marine Corps leadership philosophy just as applicable in the civilian world as it is on the battlefield, it is even more applicable than some popular nonmilitary thinking on the subject. Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, acknowledges that the Marine Corps played a vital role in shaping his life. He has also noted the business achievements of other Marines in the corporate world. In a 2001 article in the Legacy newsletter, Smith states, “nothing has prepared business leaders better for their roles in business and society than the lessons they learned in the Corps—lessons of discipline, organization, commitment and integrity.” (2001)

Common Stereotypes about Marine Corps Leadership
Many people have the common misconception that Marine leadership is characterized by gravel voiced Marines barking orders at impressionable young people who follow orders blindly. This stereotype is perpetuated in movies like, Full Metal Jacket, and The Boys from Company C. While the movies are not inaccurate, they depict a leadership style that is limited to training environments. Consider the following example: In April of 2002, 80 MBA students of The Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania went to Quantico to participate in two-days of Marine Corps leadership training. The event was called, “Learning leadership and decision-making under uncertainty and complexity.” Events of the training are reported in the Financial Times by Paul Sheppard who attended the training (2002).

Throughout the two days, the MBA students underwent obstacles and training normally reserved for Marine officers in training. These obstacles included navigating an 18-foot wall and raiding a machine gun nest. During the course of the training, the students were under the stern supervision of Marine Corps drill instructors. When comparing corporate leadership to military leadership, Paul Sheppard, a Wharton MBA, had this to say:

What lessons in leadership did the business school students learn from the event? There are obvious differences between military and corporate leadership. Modern managers could never adopt the drill sergeant’s approach to instilling discipline, nor do they expect employees to subjugate their individuality to that of the team. However, my classmates felt that they had learnt some valuable lessons (Sheppard, 2002).

A training environment like the one the MBA students underwent is indicative of the stressful training all Marines undergo during the beginning of their Marine Corps experience but in no way captures the scope and scale of the leadership training that a Marine receives during the course of their careers. Specifically, drill instructors are required to assume an abrasive, confrontational leadership style in order to get recruits and officer candidates used to operating under stressful conditions. This leadership style characterizes specific training environments that are a small part of the Marine Corps leadership philosophy, usually just the beginning part. After boot camp, Marines become exposed to a more universal leadership philosophy that works in any environment, both military and civilian. The “obvious differences” that Paul Sheppard referred to are far more subtle after boot camp, and it’s the subtle differences in how the Marine Corps prioritizes its leadership objectives that gives it its key distinction from popular leadership teachings which is also its strength.

Part 2, “The Marine Corps Leadership System” coming soon

Expert Power

Last week my younger brother, Cam, sent me an article posted on MSNBC titled, To get a post-military job, drop the jargon, GI, written by Eve Tahmincioglu. The article gives military personnel advice in transitioning to the civilian world. Aside from the article’s condescending and stereotypical attitude (which Cam responded to in his blog) that advises, “Remember, ex-Marines: No more yelling,” the article misses the point. After both of my brothers, my father, my wife, and I have all transitioned out of the military, I have to say that the challenges associated with the transition into the civilian world are not a matter of resume polishing, they are a matter of creating substance in it.

There are two and only two ways to transition into the civilian job market successfully, and both relate to expertise:

1.) When a civilian, do the same thing you did as a service member. In my dad’s case, he used his military training as an intelligence officer to get a job on the civilian side of the house. His expertise is needed in a post 9/11 world, and because his expertise translated directly, he was able to get a good position in the government where he can continue to make valuable contributions. If your military expertise translates directly into jobs civilian organizations offer, and you still want to do that job, you will be more likely to have an easy transition.

2.) Retrain. To do this you have to build expertise from the ground up. It is time consuming so the earlier you start the better. This means using your benefits, and developing strategies for adaptation like making studying a way of life. If retraining is your only option, or your preferred option, you should not wait until your one week of separations classes to figure out what you plan to do once you leave the military. Likewise, you shouldn’t wait until your troops are ready to get out to make them think about what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Don’t be like me; don’t wait until you’re applying for jobs bagging groceries, and seriously mulling over the ad in the paper to be the Chucky Cheese mouse to realize the hard truth of what needs to be done. Start working your way to expertise in a field you can be employable in, and do so now. After all, no one stays in the military forever. Most organizations willing to pay new employees for good jobs aren’t willing to pay to train them to do those jobs. They expect employees to do that on their own.

Why Expertise Matters so Much
In 1959, social psychologists John R. P. French and Bertram Raven proposed five bases of social power. In a job, three of the five bases of power are given to the person by the organization: 1.) Reward power (the power to reward), 2.) coercive power (the power to punish), and 3.) legitimate power (power derived from a groups hierarchal structure, like rank in the military). The other two bases of social power, the psychologists suggest, come from the individual-4.) referent power (the power to persuade or motivate), and 5.) expert power (domains specific knowledge). The idea that referent power comes from the individual is challenged by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great. Collins points out in his study that great organizations do not find people to motivate-they instead find motivated people. In other words, organizations recruit people already motivated to do their mission. From this view, referent power is not a social power base flowing entirely from the individual, but instead, is at least partially (or even mainly) a manifestation of the compatibility of the social group’s values and goals and the values and goals of new members. Expert power then, is the only true social power that resides completely in the individual.

Stated another way, expert power is the only power base completely in your control that can attract opportunity. A college degree opens doors in a variety of fields because it is evidence of budding expertise. Where the law does not require a college degree for entry into a field (like that of a lawyer or doctor) then mere evidence of expertise will do. In the art field for instance, the portfolio is the evidence of expertise that is most important to companies seeking illustrators and designers. The first challenge then, is to develop expertise, and the second is to demonstrate evidence of it.

The quality of opportunities one gets are directly proportional to the expertise one develops. The closer one is to true expertise, the better the opportunities one will attract. However, building expertise is laborious and opportunities available before expertise is developed are less than desirous.

In the Tahmincioglu’s article she cites the progress of Stephen Andersen, a recently discharged Marine sergeant who was part of a helicopter flying crew. She claims that the “combat and managerial experience he got in the military was meaningless when it came to finding a job.” Of Andersen’s progress, the article concludes:

Andersen, the Marine who was a helicopter crewman in Iraq, took a low-paying job for a home-improvement retailer in San Diego even though it wasn’t what he wanted. He ended up leaving after only a brief period because he felt his direct boss was anti-military and figured his chances of moving up the ladder were slim.

He now is a financial service specialist for a bank in Atlanta, and even though it’s not the exact job title he hoped for he sees room for advancement.

“I’m going to prove myself to my employer,” he says, “and see how high I can go.”

Tahmincioglu misdiagnosed Sergeant Andersen’s problem. Andersen’s managerial experience, important due to its relationship to referent power, will be very useful to him when he adds to it some expert power. The problem isn’t his military jargon, and as stated, he does not lack management experience; however, his expertise is in aviation and he is applying for jobs in home-improvement retail and in banking. In order to advance in banking he is going to have to become an expert at something his current employer or a future one values highly. I wish there were an easy way to do this but there is not. There is, however, a sure way to do it and it is the subject of an ongoing series I’m writing called Unchain Your Brain.

Tahmincioglu’s article and others like it tend to be misleading. Even separations classes, I think, give too much bad advice. When I went to my separations class prior to getting out of the service in 1995 the advice seemed to be, “stop thinking like a Marine.” We were told to grow our hair out, and stop using military terms. While the advice is well meaning I would advise the opposite: Never stop thinking like a Marine. The pack never comes off, and an ongoing commitment to the mental, physical, and character disciplines will see you through your transition and beyond. It will put you in position to make your communities, and thus America, better. And if you want to keep a high and tight, and refer to a bathroom as a “head,” go right ahead; it’s irrelevant. It is not going to prevent you from finding opportunities — lack of expertise, however, will.