As a student at Caltech I was a member of the Air Force ROTC.  Back in the day, some of us cadets were flown to The Firepower Demonstration at Eglin Air Force Base.  In the plane we sat on canvas seats and bare aluminum structure.  Backpack parachutes were stacked in the corner, so to say.  All of us cadets were uncomfortable sitting in the canvas seats.  He pulled out a parachute backpack and lay down on it.

The crew chief, a grizzled Master Sergeant, jerked the parachute pack out from under the cadet.  The sergeant gave us all a lecture that I shall never forget.  It was physiology and physics and survival all rolled up in one.

The sergeant told us about another flight with young cadets.  On that flight, a cadet had also taken a nap on his parachute backpack.  When something went wrong with the airplane the cadets had to put on their chutes and bail out.  They all landed safely except for the cadet who had been taking a nap on his parachute.  His chute ripped when it opened.  The cadet was killed.

The sergeant reminded us that everyone sweats.  He even quoted the amount of sweat produced by a normal weight male in an hour.  The cadet had been sleeping on his parachute for about three hours.  In doing so, the cadet had soaked his chute with sweat.

The Sergeant said that when you bail out of a plane at high altitude the outside air temperature can instantly freeze water (30 degrees below Zero at 25,000 feet).  He told us that when parachute fabric has ice in it, the fabric loses its flexibility.  And when it loses its flexibility it rips.  That young cadet had traded temporary comfort for his life!

Maybe this story really happened.  Maybe it was just a mythical training aid.  Either way it trained me.  Over the years I have at times chosen comfort over the right thing to do.  I am overweight.  Look around to see how many other Americans are also overweight.  Comfort food endangered their lives, as it has mine.

Some decisions pit comfort against survival.  When the alarm wakes you in the morning you may decide to hit the snooze button.  That is a decision to be comfortable. Most days, that will work out all right.  Some days, that that decision will lead to disaster.

• If choosing to be comfortable causes you to fail the team, will you survive?
• If you fail to face your health problems as directed by the doctor, will you get well?
• If you are the family breadwinner, will you budget your family’s money carefully or spend big bucks “keeping up with the Jones”?

Leadership focus: Anytime you choose to be comfortable instead of facing a problem, be suspicious! Your decisions define your character.  The old saying, “The coward dies 1000 deaths, the hero only one” should inform all your decisions.

My Take: I don’t know your life.

• I don’t know what the biggest threat to your survival is.
• I do know there are threats out there.
• I do know that meeting them is not comfortable.
• I do know that the consistent winner faces the threats head on!

You must decide whether to be comfortable or to survive.  It is up to you!

It was the fourth day in boot camp.  The drill instructor flipped on the lights and thundered, “Drop Your Cocks and Grab Your Socks.”  All of the recruits were between 18 and 20 years of age.  It did not matter that they were ROTC recruits.  Building soldiers or building officers, the military applies the same rules and methods.  We had 22 minutes to shower, shave, relieve ourselves and be in formation ready for morning exercise.

Was that crude wake up call just for intimidation?  Or was it something more?  Almost everything the DI says is a tool used to teach, to sensitize, to nurture, and to build structure.  The structure being built is a winning team of winning warriors.  The DI teaches each and every soldier to survive efficiently.  Efficiency is a logistics issue.  Efficiency is not wasting anything, whether it is energy, equipment, motivation or focus.  Efficiency is nurtured in the training of a young recruit.

Healthy young men often wake up in the morning with “Morning wood”. The proper term for this phenomenon is Nocturnal Penile Tumescence!  And most of them are acutely embarrassed to have anybody else notice.  The DI’s heavy handed greeting stresses those who are embarrassed.  Stress is an emotional exclamation mark.  Stress focuses the mind of the recruit. Recruits will become soldiers.  Soldiers are efficient team players.  Efficiency implies an understanding of the boundaries between essential functions and personal wants.  In this situation, the young recruit is learning that his focus must be on team function not irrelevant personal gratification.

As Bart Simpson says, “So what?”  The efficient transformation of a group of easy-going young men into a team of survivable warriors is the job of the DI.  Every word and every action of the DI is focused on nurturing change.  There is no time for the recruit to ask why.  There is no time for the recruit to say I do not understand.  There is only time to nurture the strengths that nature has brought forth in the individual.  These strengths in modern society may take years to become reliable.  In effect, the boot camp is a kind of hothouse in which the recruits are forced to bloom in minimum time.

Leader’s Focus: It is said that nothing sharpens the mind so much as the threat of death.  The military uses artificial stress to sharpen the minds and bodies of young recruits so that they may live.  Whatever the nature of an organization, training under stress accelerates the learning process and nurtures the individual’s abilities.

My Take on Winning: America has grown from a nearly primitive society to one which can afford comfort for most.  Most of us provide comfort for our children.  If we do not also nurture them with stress, there will be some point, where they will meet a stress test which may be too much for them.  The outside world sees America as soft because we are affluent.  Throughout our history the economic trend has been upward.  That could not have happened if we had not been nurtured through stressful experience.

In boot camp old habits die and new habits are born. It’s common for civilians to believe that boot camp is all about squashing initiative. In fact boot camp is about building initiative. Initiative is built on a foundation of self-knowledge. Nature provides us with certain attributes and nurturing makes those attributes useful. Don’t choke on that! Believe it or not boot camp is about nurturing: nurturing self-knowledge, nurturing skill, nurturing an appreciation of standards.

Yes, in boot camp you learn to polish shoes. Why? Because in a good polish job there are no shortcuts.  If you cannot learn to stay with a simple task until the job is perfect, then you have little chance of surviving in combat. For that matter there’s little chance of your surviving in the business world either. Survival and victory are composed of having perfectly executed many small tasks.  We use the words PERFECTLY EXECUTED to mean that the job was done right.  We do not mean nit picking over every detail.

When soldiers are lined up for inspection, a quick look down the line tells you if all the shoes are polished. If they are, you know that these troops know how to do the little things the right way. When recruits have learned to do the little things perfectly, then they are prepared to learn tasks that sooner or later will save their lives.

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf is quoted as saying “Polished Shoes Save Lives.” As an Army brat he may have known this before he could read or write. He grew up in an Army family, went to high school at Valley Forge Military Academy and then graduated from The United States Military Academy at West Point.

In Vietnam Schwarzkopf showed that great courage under fire is part of the perfectly executed job. When some of his men were caught in a minefield and one had been wounded, he crawled into the minefield to save his men. He proved that “Polished Shoes Save Lives.”

On December 26, 1943 Marines under the command of Lewis W. Walt (later to become Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps) went ashore at Cape Gloucester in New Guinea. They left their landing crafts in chest deep water. In the time between joining the Marine Corps and stepping off those landing crafts most of them had learned to do little things perfectly.

Step into That Picture. Will you survive, or as some did that day, die? Someday, somewhere you will be confronted with the tests of how well you do all the little things. Did you go to the right boot camp?

Leader’s Focus: winning is a nonlinear function of a lot of small jobs done perfectly.

My Take on Winning: Go to Boot Camp. It will save your life.