Speaker 1: This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast.
Speaker 1: More what you Hear Weekday Afternoon.
Speaker 2: Is on the Drive. Admiral Bob Harward is retired as
Speaker 2: a Navy seal admiral with four decades of war finding
Speaker 2: experience including Bosnia, Panama, Somonia, Afghanistan, Iraqi, Ymmen and he
Speaker 2: goes on and on, never lost a single man under
Speaker 2: his command and that is commendable. He's written a new
Speaker 2: book called The Gouge, How to be Smarter than the
Speaker 2: situation you are in. Admiral Bob Harward, welcome. I wanted
Speaker 2: to start with you. Growing up in Iran in the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, a bit of a tumultuous time to be there.
Speaker 2: What brought you to Iran?
Speaker 3: Quite the contrary, it wasn't tumultuate. It was absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 3: My father was a naval officer as well. I followed
Speaker 3: in his footsteps and he was there advising and supporting
Speaker 3: the Iranian Navy as we provided them ships and armor.
Speaker 3: That so it was the retired naval officer involved in
Speaker 3: the defense industry and Iran in the seventies was absolutely spectacular,
Speaker 3: wonderful people, a wonderful country, great scheme, hunting, very western,
Speaker 3: very modernized. So it was just an incredible country. And
Speaker 3: unfortunately it's to come to an Islamic revolution that we're
Speaker 3: still dealing with today, unfortunately.
Speaker 2: So this was all prior to that downfall, but it
Speaker 2: did pique my curiosity. Let's talk about the gouge, how
Speaker 2: to be smarter than the situation you're in. Let's start
Speaker 2: with that term, the gouge. What is its significance?
Speaker 3: Great, it's a very infamous naval term and what most
Speaker 3: people when they use it, they think about it. It's
Speaker 3: the inside information what you really need to know. If
Speaker 3: you were going in to take a test in college, Hey,
Speaker 3: here's this stuff. You know he's going to ask about this.
Speaker 3: This is what you need to be thinking about. Here's
Speaker 3: even maybe the answers. But the real meaning of the
Speaker 3: term is the culture that takes care of each other.
Speaker 3: It's a term that originated in World War Two when
Speaker 3: we were building ships around the a lot of ships
Speaker 3: and manning them with crews, and we were lacking in
Speaker 3: the experience in the cruise. So those experience members on
Speaker 3: the ships went out out of their way to train
Speaker 3: and educate the other members of the ship. Hey, here's
Speaker 3: what you really need to know. Here's what you don't know.
Speaker 3: Here's the information that's going to take care of you
Speaker 3: and take care of the ship and keep us all alive.
Speaker 3: And so that phrase was created in World War Two
Speaker 3: that were used. But more important than the phrase itself
Speaker 3: is that culture. That culture allows you to proactively take
Speaker 3: care of each other, invest in each other. And we
Speaker 3: all have that challenge on any business, the military, any
Speaker 3: organization trying to accomplish a goal needs their people to
Speaker 3: perform tasks or objectives to make it happen. And then business,
Speaker 3: it's all related to profit, but just as important as
Speaker 3: them achieving their goals is that process that allows them
Speaker 3: to grow, mature and achieve their own personal goals. And
Speaker 3: that what the gouge is really a description of that culture,
Speaker 3: that leadership that allows you to take care of your
Speaker 3: people at the same time they're taking care of the
Speaker 3: business or the mission you're trying to accomplish. So the
Speaker 3: gouge is that culture that permeates that throughout any organization.
Speaker 2: Admiral Bob Harward US Navy retired a seal and admiral
Speaker 2: in the Navy as well. The book is the gouge
Speaker 2: how to be smarter than the situation you are in.
Speaker 2: Admiral then, I have experienced this firsthand and a couple
Speaker 2: of occasions in my own career, one coverage of a
Speaker 2: deadly hurricane. I never and to this day harkened back
Speaker 2: to the people I worked with in that chaotic situation.
Speaker 2: But we were all in it together, and we were
Speaker 2: all there to help each other in any way we could,
Speaker 2: and I harkened back to it as some of the
Speaker 2: best times in my entire career.
Speaker 3: You and I liked ubber, God bless you. Same thing
Speaker 3: I was in my navy career. I never thought I
Speaker 3: was good to be good enough in any job, and
Speaker 3: I had twenty eight different jobs as a naval author.
Speaker 3: You did a year or two in every job, and
Speaker 3: if you're good, they promotching you go on and keep
Speaker 3: doing that. And every job I was successful not because
Speaker 3: of me, but because all the people around me who
Speaker 3: did supported me as I supported them. As a leader,
Speaker 3: one of my biggest jobs was to make sure they
Speaker 3: were successful and accomplishing the goals and tasks they needed
Speaker 3: to do, and that help them grow. And look after
Speaker 3: that year two I was gone. Someone else came in
Speaker 3: that job as usually from those ranks, so it really
Speaker 3: served a wide variety of goodness, positive influence. And just
Speaker 3: like here that hurricane, you could have done that alone,
Speaker 3: you have to do it with the team, and what
Speaker 3: they learned from them was just as important as what
Speaker 3: you learn from them. So it's a two way street.
Speaker 3: And so setting that culture or that understanding and any
Speaker 3: organization that is so important. And this like your story
Speaker 3: on the hurricane, this book has stories that illustrate that
Speaker 3: so help people grow and learn from those experiences to
Speaker 3: establish those sort of cultures and approach as they work
Speaker 3: with people.
Speaker 2: The book is the Gouge, How to be smarter than
Speaker 2: the situation you are in. Admiral Bob Harward is with us.
Speaker 2: Are there some bullet points that you go through about
Speaker 2: acquiring the gouge? Or is the gouge something you just
Speaker 2: kind of fall into as I just described with hurricane
Speaker 2: coverage or you in a battle situation.
Speaker 3: Well, I'd say it's a lot of both. There's a
Speaker 3: couple of stories in the book that and I never
Speaker 3: had a master planner. Life just took me along the
Speaker 3: way I call it. I call it fated. So I
Speaker 3: think it's two ways, will deal you a hand, how
Speaker 3: you how you deal with that hand is important, important,
Speaker 3: And there are some principles and my purpose. I came
Speaker 3: in with the purpose of serving my country and doing
Speaker 3: whatever they asked me to do because I thought it
Speaker 3: was important and that in itself added to the great
Speaker 3: adventure of life. So purpose is important. Enjoy life, Enjoy
Speaker 3: every moment. I was blessed because every day I got
Speaker 3: to wake up, it was like Christmas. I couldn't wait
Speaker 3: to get up and get into what I was doing
Speaker 3: that day and how I could contribute. How I enjoyed
Speaker 3: being with the people I work. So I think those
Speaker 3: are all components as I talk about in the book.
Speaker 3: But then again, as I'm one of the stories, I
Speaker 3: indicates how plays a hand in all of our lives
Speaker 3: as well, and you've got accept that and understand it.
Speaker 3: And then finally, I think another important principle of believing
Speaker 3: in yourself. We all have those times we doubt ourselves
Speaker 3: to kind of have two voices in the mind at
Speaker 3: any time, But believing at the end of the day
Speaker 3: in yourself and what you do is important. So all
Speaker 3: those kind of principles are clarified in the book.
Speaker 2: The book is the Gouge How to be Smarter than
Speaker 2: the situation you are in. Admiral Barb Harward I asked
Speaker 2: about the significance of the term itself, because so many
Speaker 2: military monodymonic devices mean something else, like fu bar and
Speaker 2: so on. I wondered if there was a bit of
Speaker 2: a more nefarious meaning to the letters of that word.
Speaker 3: Now it's pretty it's the term the gouge son acroadym
Speaker 3: And as they say, there's good gouge and there's bump gouge.
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes someone's going to give the information they
Speaker 3: think it's good. And I give a perfect example of it.
Speaker 3: I was when I came into the Navy. When I
Speaker 3: was commissioned on the Navalcademy, I wanted to be a
Speaker 3: Navy seal. Unfortunately, it was the end of the Vietnam
Speaker 3: War and the Navy was kind of getting rid of seals.
Speaker 3: We had no real purpose supporting the navy. And my
Speaker 3: father was a ship driver all his life, and so
Speaker 3: I spent four years driving a ship from when I
Speaker 3: had no transfer. Then I got accepted to go to
Speaker 3: seal training and my father found out about it. He
Speaker 3: called me and he thought he was giving me good
Speaker 3: gouts because as he thought, there was no future in
Speaker 3: the navy for seal. So he said to me, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, I never did think it too great. I
Speaker 3: just didn't think there's dumb there's no future in being
Speaker 3: a seal. And there's one of those times where I
Speaker 3: just contradicted him. I said, hey, Dad, I don't really
Speaker 3: care about its future. I think this is something i'd
Speaker 3: be good at and it's what I want to do.
Speaker 3: So I did it. I was fortunate because the world changed,
Speaker 3: and so what his good gouge was that time, from
Speaker 3: his experience, his knowledge, he was giving me very good advice.
Speaker 3: I just wasn't smart enough to realize it. And the
Speaker 3: world with nine to elevens and others that made the
Speaker 3: seal career very fruitful and productive. And alone, behold, I
Speaker 3: became an agnal. Something he always thought I would be.
Speaker 3: I never thought I would be. And that's kind of
Speaker 3: the last story in the book, a story of faint.
Speaker 3: But that's an example of gouge that he thought was
Speaker 3: good gouge. It probably was, but it became bad gouge later,
Speaker 3: or bum gouge as we say. So now the phrase
Speaker 3: itself is well known in the Navy and the military term,
Speaker 3: but the culture is more important than the phrase. How
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: Describes Admiral Bob how Harward, the gouge, how to be
Speaker 2: smarter than the situation. You're in out everywhere. You get
Speaker 2: books now, and we thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: Sarah, Thanks well, great to be with you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee
Speaker 1: Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
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