Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Dave Berke is all about clearly defined goals. A retired U.S. Marine Corps officer, fighter pilot, and ground combat leader, Berke lives and breathes setting long-range strategic goals to act as his compass, and then filling the journey with the short-range, tactical goals required to make the dream come true. The result is a decorated military career that is nothing short of elite. As an F/A-18 pilot, Berke deployed twice from the USS John C Stennis in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He spent three years as an Instructor Pilot at TOPGUN where he served as the Training Officer, the senior staff pilot responsible for conduct of the TOPGUN course – no small feat considering that Berke was a Marine at the time, and the program itself is part of the Navy. God-given talent is an essential ingredient when it comes to being one of the best fighter pilots on the planet, and Berke’s genius is well-suited to flying all manner of jets, from the fourth generation planes like the F/A-18 Super Hornet, to the state-of-the-art, stealth fighters like the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning. Berke, however, is quick to point out that talent alone will only take you so far as an elite aviator. You have to set very specific goals, and then have the humility to check your ego at the door – contrary to what Tom Cruise might have you think.
“Humility is your best friend,” Berke says of his time in the cockpit. “It’s the only way to ensure an open mind, and an open mind is the only way to become better at flying fighter jets.”
Berke, who today serves as the Director of Leadership Development and Alignment Programs at Echelon Front, says that while setting goals provides the roadmap, discipline is needed to achieve success.
Director of Leadership Development and Alignment Programs at Echelon Front
“At TOPGUN, the pilots most likely to be invited back as instructors were the ones with the most discipline,” Berke says. “They were the ones who did the tedious research to prepare for a brief. They were the ones who never cut short a debrief until every learning point had been identified. They were the ones who outperformed their more talented peers because they worked harder and longer.”
Discipline also played a vital, life-or-death role in 2006, when Berke traded in his F/A-18 Hornet for an M-4 Carbine, serving as an ANGLICO Forward Air Controller during the Iraq War. From the ground, Berke supported the Army’s 1st Armored Division during extensive urban combat operations in Ramadi, Iraq. It was here that Berke led his supporting arms liaison team on scores of combat missions into the most dangerous neighborhoods, and accompanied SEAL Task Unit Bruiser on virtually every major operation in the Battle of Ramadi. Without discipline, it would have been impossible for Berke to perform his job alongside Chris Kyle, the subject of Clint Eastwood’s 2014 biographical war drama, American Sniper.
“Most of my time in Ramadi was spent with men like Chris, who would sit next to me on rooftops, motionless for hours, observing the city through the scope of his rifle,” says Berke. “Day in and day out, I watched him do the tedious, thankless, and unrewarding work they don’t show you in recruitment videos or movies. Few things can sap your motivation and focus like Ramadi’s suffocating dust and 115 degree heat. The only thing that gets you through an environment like that is discipline. And although that discipline often goes unrecognized, it doesn’t go unrewarded: It allowed Chris to save countless lives and made him the most successful sniper in SEAL history.”
Berke’s goal to fly the world’s most sophisticated aircraft was later realized when he slipped into the cockpit of two similar-but-different fifth generation fighters. First, he became the only Marine selected to fly the F-22 Raptor, having served as an exchange officer at the Air Force’s 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron as the Division Commander. Then, from 2012 to 2014, he became the first operational pilot ever to fly and be qualified in the F-35B, serving as the Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps’ first F-35 squadron. Each involved plenty of serious goal setting, coupled with the discipline needed to learn how to fly these next-gen fighter jets.
“Guys like me, and everyone who’s ever transitioned from flying a legacy airplane like an F-16, F-15, or F-18, are always going to bring forward some habits,” says Berke. “A lot of those habits are going to be wrong. I quickly realized that you can’t fly the F-35 like a fourth generation airplane. With each flight, my goal was to leave behind those old habits and embrace the F-35 for what it is – a revolutionary aircraft with a fundamentally different set of capabilities.”
The differences between fourth and fifth gen fighters are impossible to ignore. The advances include nose-to-tail low observable or stealth technologies as part of the aircraft’s design that make it almost impossible for even other fifth generation fighters to detect; improved situational awareness through having multi-spectral sensors located across all aspects of the airframe; and a state-of-the-art network which allows them to receive, share and store information to enhance the battlespace picture.
“And those are just a few of the differences,” Berke says quickly. “I had to retrain myself to get the most out of the next-gen aircraft, because there are so many things that don’t translate. A maneuver that might work in an F-18 doesn’t necessarily apply to the F-35. At the end of the day, we’re just scratching the surface of what these new planes can do.”
It should come as no surprise that Berke was able to make that quantum leap to fifth generation fighters. As a child, he’d often daydreamed about becoming a pilot, only to have his mother challenge him to learn more, develop a plan, and set goals. Once a Marine, he faced long odds in becoming a pilot, competing with 250 officers for two spots in the flight program. He’s taught at TOPGUN, completed hundreds of nighttime carrier landings, logged thousands of hours in the air, flown at Mach 2, and emerged from the Iraq War in one piece.
Following his retirement from the Marine Corps, Berke joined Echelon Front, where he provides unmatched experience and unique perspective into combat leadership, analytical decision-making, risk mitigation, and creating winning teams.
All of it amazing. None of it possible without setting very specific goals, and then having the discipline to turn the dream into reality.
You grew up in Southern California.
My first real memory was of moving from San Diego to Orange County when I was five. We moved to a place called El Toro, which just happened to be home to a big Marine aviation base, and I remember that pretty vividly. Our house was right under the flight path, so seeing fighter jets in the skies became a daily occurrence and sparked my fascination with airplanes. As I got a little older I started going to the annual El Toro Airshow, which furthered my fascination with aviation. I guess you could say it was in my blood by a young age.
Growing up around these cool jets had to be a dream come true. When did you start to think that you might be able to climb into the cockpit?
There certainly is a big difference between dreaming about doing something and taking the necessary steps to achieve the goal. Make no mistake, at age 5 I was dreaming about flying fighter jets, but I had no real context for it. Probably the closest thing to reality for me at that time was the movie Star Wars, which, as a five-year-old, is pure fantasy. A few years later I started going to the airshows and realized that pilots are real people. At that point I certainly got the sense that, “Hey, this isn’t a fantasy. People are actually doing this.”
Did you feel it was your destiny to be a pilot?
I was definitely obsessed with flying jet airplanes, so that became a singular focus. I loved the Blue Angels. I got into building model planes. I read every book that you could possibly get your hands on related to aviation and military history. As fate would have it, I ended up in a town where these cool jets were flying around, and where we’d have people from the Marine Corps come to our school to speak. That was big for me. It gave me another way to interact with the pilots – I could ask them questions, listen to their stories, and learn more about how they came to do what they do. Suddenly, this dream that was somewhat abstract, started to solidify.
I was 14 when the movie Top Gun came out, and when I walked out of the theater I was pretty dead set on wanting to do that. By my junior year in high school I was doing some basic research and talking to the guidance counselor. I also went to a recruiting station and asked the questions on my mental checklist, because I wanted to know what was required how you went about doing certain things. So, I started to coalesce around the dream and began to take some fairly deliberate actions, such as talking to recruiters before I was old enough to enlist. By the time I graduated from high school there were no secrets. I knew exactly what I wanted, what was required, and how to take those very deliberate actions in order to make that happen.
You decided to become a Marine rather than enlist in the Air Force.
Becoming a Marine had a lot to do with the fact that I was living in a Marine town. The base was right there, and most of the pilots in the 10th Special Operations Command were certified around the Marine Corps. That was a major influence. Early on I associated flying jets with the Air Force, and I might have gone in that direction if not for an influential father figure in my life, a Marine named Eric. He’s the one who revealed to me that I could be both a Marine and you a fighter pilot, so that’s when I decided that I 100% wanted to be a pilot in the Marine Corps.
The Marine Corps seems like the more daunting to becoming a fighter pilot.
Yeah, in some ways that’s true. There was a point early on where I had built up the Marine Corps in my mind as an almost impossible, unattainable goal. I was certain that being a Marine was the hardest thing to do of the four services, and that flying fighters for the Marine Corps was the most challenging. In retrospect, I have the utmost respect for the Navy and the Air Force and the paths those guys go down to become pilots, because their paths are equally daunting. Ultimately, I believed in the Marine Corps ethos, and I believed that becoming a Marine was the most challenging and the toughest route for me. I started to steel myself for the physical and mental challenges of being a Marine officer first, and being a pilot second – with the hope that I could combine the two. I actually contracted to join the Marine Corps as a ground officer, so there were no guarantees that I would be going to flight school when I first got there. I had to accomplish Officer Candidate School, finish my college education, and complete my ground commission. I was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps, at which point they sent me off to something called The Basic School. Marine officers, regardless of their jobs, go through this six-month program. This is where you get assigned what we call an MOS, which stands for Military Occupational Specialty. This is a particular job or career field inside the Marine Corps. Only then could I compete for an aviation slot, so it was certainly a very daunting path for me.
You were one of 250 new officers, and there were only 2 pilot spots available in your class. How did you convince yourself that you could rise to the top in such a competitive environment?
There were 250 guys who were in my company, but not everyone wanted to be a pilot. Some of them already had an aviation guarantee to attend flight training, so while I was competing with a lot of them, I wasn’t necessarily competing with all 250 in the class. During the first week we were told that there were two pilot spots available. That was a tough thing for me to think about, because the odds that I’d get one of these two spots were really slim. Competing with my peers and performing well enough to earn one of those two spots was another daunting task. Thankfully that’s what happened, which was obviously a pretty big thing for me. The next thing you know, I was going to flight school for the Marine Corps.
Please tell me about your TOPGUN experience, where you spent three years as an Instructor Pilot dual-qualified in the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F/A-18 Hornet.
After completing flight school I was assigned to fly fighter jets. My plan all along had been to fly the F-18 in the Marine Corps, so I was living that dream when another career path – TOPGUN – revealed itself. TOPGUN represents the pinnacle of your profession as a fighter pilot for the Navy and Marine Corps. I decided to make it a goal, which meant that I had to train and work hard, and I was lucky enough to get the opportunity. At TOPGUN I found myself surrounded by like-minded people who had the same mindset about wanting to do really well in their career field. It was exciting to be part of a group of people that were like that. TOPGUN offered an environment where I was able to compete against the best pilots in the world. As a TOPGUN instructor, I was able to be qualified to fly the F-16, which meant that I was dual-qualified, which was almost unheard of back then. Interestingly, when I was seriously considering the Air Force in my early teens, the F-16 was the plane that fascinated me most. It was very special for me to do that as a Marine at TOPGUN.
A TOPGUN Instructor Pilot is the best of the best. Do you attribute natural ability or hard work to reaching such heights in your chosen profession?
Some people have a natural talent when it comes to being a fighter pilot, but you have uniquely gifted individuals out there in every career field. The reality is, the two things that most TOPGUN instructors have in common are an unbeatable work ethic, and a ton of humility. Those are the things that actually make them successful. Are there gifted pilots out there? Absolutely. But that doesn’t make you a good teacher, and that doesn’t make you a good instructor. It also doesn’t mean that you are going to be better than everyone else. While I wish that I had been born with that gift, it wasn’t bestowed upon me. What I was actually most reliant on, and what most guys at TOPGUN rely on, is the work ethic and the humility that it takes to go out and get better every single day. Those things are required to be successful at a place like TOPGUN.
In addition to flying F-16s and F-18s, you’ve also flown the newer, fifth generation planes such as F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning.
After I left TOPGUN, I served as a ground forward air controller for the Marines and then went back to flying the F-18. It was during this time that I was selected to fly the F-22 Raptor. I spent almost 4 years on exchange with the Air Force flying the F-22. I got to see not only how the Air Force flies, but also how this new generation of airplanes was evolving and coming online. Then I became the first F-35 operational pilot in the Marine Corps, and got to spend three more years flying the Lightning. So I spent the last seven years of my military career flying the two most modern fighters in the world.
I’ve read where there’s a dramatic difference between fourth and fifth generation fighters.
I had a good frame of reference when I was introduced to the Raptor, because I had spent so much time flying the F-16s and F-18s. This is not a small evolution in capability we’re talking about. It’s a revolutionary leap. It’s actually really hard to draw any comparison between fifth generation fighters and legacy fighters like the Hornet, or the F-16, or F-15, and certainly older airplanes like the F-14 Tomcat. The capability in the modern, fifth generation fighters like the Raptor and the Lightning is exponentially greater. These machines are unbelievable.
How steep is the learning curve when it comes to flying fifth generation fighters?
The transition from fourth gen to fifth gen is a huge transition for a pilot, especially for those who started out flying fourth generation airplanes. It’s hard to overstate how difficult it is to take 2,000 hours of fourth generation flight time and then one day say, “A lot of that doesn’t apply.” So much of it is different. The instinct to do certain things is no longer the right decision in a fifth generation airplane. It takes time to acclimate. It took me a long time to get used to flying in a fifth generation airplane and doing the things that a fifth generation pilot should do.
Let’s talk about the core functionality of the fifth generation fighters. The F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning are designed with different missions in mind.
First of all, the F-22 and the F-35 are much more like each other than they are different. Since both are fifth generation fighters, the most obvious similarities are inherent in the design – these planes are built from the ground up to be multi-mission, to take information and disseminate it to other aircraft, to offboard that information, and to be able to facilitate the development of an ecosystem that doesn’t even doesn’t right now. Those are qualities and characteristics of a fifth-generation plane that aren’t present in fourth generation platforms like the F-16s and F-18s.
I’ve got to know: What’s it like to fly an F-22?
When you get into the F-22, right away it is impossible not to be enamored with it. It is just an immeasurably powerful airplane. I flew the F-16, and that was an amazing airplane. I flew F-15s, and they were powerful and fast, but the Raptor is just exclusive. In terms of pure performance, maneuverability, and speed, there is nothing on this planet like the F-22. You can see it at airshows. It’s impossible to get into that airplane and get up to 60,000 feet and not think, “This is unbelievable.” You’re flying at Mach 2 and pulling nine g’s. It’s an absolute performance machine.
Is the Raptor just as impressive inside the cockpit?
The performance of the airplane is incredibly impressive, but if you were to ask me to choose one of the qualities that this airplane brings to the table – speed, stealth, maneuverability, g’s, payload, range, or information – I would emphatically take the information. When you see what the F-22 presents to you, from the inside out, and how it uses all of the sensors and the information sharing at its disposal…and for that to be that much more impressive than the performance…I think that is my best way of telling you what is really going on inside the airplane. It is pretty overwhelming.
The F-35 is a pretty special aircraft as well.
The F-35 benefited a lot from the Raptor. A lot of the lessons that we learned from the F-22 – from its initial development to its mission sets – is inherent in the build of the Lightning. One of the things that makes the F-35 unique is that the spectrum that it operates in is much, much broader. The Raptor still mostly operates in the RF spectrum, and it is important to be able to dominate in that space, because that’s where a lot of the warfare is in aviation, but the F-35 brings electro-optical, infrared, laser, and radio to the table. As warfare changes and the world evolves, the threat gets a big vote in where we are going to operate. The F-35, inherent in its design from tip to tail, can operate in a much broader set of environments than the Raptor can.
What is the biggest misconception when it comes to comparing and contrasting the two planes?
While the F-22 is designed for air-to-air combat, there’s a misconception that the F-35 is only an air-to-ground fighter jet. So there’s probably a little bit of a misconception with that, because the F-35 is designed as a multi-role airplane: It is a strike fighter that does both air-to-air and air-to-ground. Make no mistake, the most capable air-to-air platform in the world is the F-22 Raptor, but the second most capable air-to-air platform in the world is the F-35. So, for those people out there who are thinking that the F-35 isn’t primarily designed for air-to-air, that’s a true statement. The Raptor is designed for air-to-air combat. But, other than the F-22, there isn’t another airplane in the world that can compete with the F-35 in the air-to-air arena. That’s where these big generational differences we are talking about come into play. It would be like me saying, “Your desktop is really designed for computing power, your tablet is designed to be more flexible.” That’s fine, but the tablet that I’ve got is infinitely more powerful than that 20-year-old computer sitting on my desk. A lot of times people misunderstand that when talking about fighter jets. The F-22 is the premier air-to-air platform, and the F-35 is a very close second.
Both the F-22 and the F-35 are also famous for their stealth technology.
In an F-22 and F-35, one of the most enjoyable things is being virtually undetectable until it’s way, way, way too late for the threat. If you manage the signature really well, and you do it in a way that is integrated with the other platforms, most of the time the threat doesn’t know you’re there. And that’s why I have extreme faith that the F-35 in particular is going to be the most dominant aircraft ever built.
How do these planes compare to their fourth generation predecessors when it comes to combat?
A combat configuration for the F-35 and F-22 is a completely low observable configuration. You want to compare the capability and the range of a fourth generation airplane after you attach the missiles and bombs? Fourth gen planes in that configuration are slow, draggy, and susceptible to threats. Trust me, a lot of times you’ve got to get rid of stuff just to stay alive. So the comparison point is often just not done correctly. Anybody who has been in combat in an F-18 or an F 16 knows that you are lugging a lot of stuff on the outside of your airplane, that it takes a lot of gas, and it’s very slow to get it there and back. The fifth generation platform can carry all of that stuff and it doesn’t change the dynamic of the airplane at all. So a side-by-side comparison of fourth gen and fifth gen is unfair, and the idea that a legacy airplane is better at combat than a fifth gen airplane simply isn’t true.
Which flavors of the F-35 have you flown?
The F-35B is the short takeoff/vertical landing, and that is the plane that I have flown.
The vertical landing is incredibly impressive. Is it difficult to pull off?
The vertical landing in the F-35B, I can’t describe how easy it is. The design of that airplane and what they were able to make it do with the technology and the software is incredible. My mom got to watch my very first vertical landing in an F-35. I was able to look out the window and wave to her, which was pretty special. The landing is so easy to do. It is the most rock steady, stable thing I’ve ever seen in aviation. Guys that flew Harriers will tell you the difference between the two is night and day.
Despite reports of budget overruns, the future for the F-35 seems bright.
It’s impossible to overstate the potential of the F-35. You can’t just say that it can do this, this, and this, and those are its limits. What this airplane does, and what it is capable of doing, it’s hard to put a ceiling on it. We’re still learning what it can do, so the worst thing that we do right now is take a template of the previous generation of airplane and overlay it on top of the F-35. We can’t go in and be satisfied with a little bit of a nuance change, or be happy with a little better performance. That’s the danger if we don’t push the envelope with this plane. We can’t get complacent. Look, pilots are habitual creatures. We’ve had a lot of success as aviators doing the things that we did, and it’s hard to have someone say, “That’s not how we do it anymore. Here’s all of the reasons why.”
So does that mean the pilots need to be flying more missions in order to learn how to get more out of these planes?
Absolutely. The sooner we get the F-35s to the pilots in the fleet, the better it is for everybody. Every day a fifth generation aviator gets into that airplane and after every mission he comes back and says, “You know what, look what I did here, here, and here. What should we think about here and here? Let’s get back to the engineers and talk about this. Let’s get back to the contractors and talk about this.” So, the growth of the airplane is all going to be internal to the people that are flying it. It’s not on a brochure, and it’s not on the assembly line. It comes from the pilots when they have the airplane in their hands. The biggest growth is happening in the operational tests, the FRS [Fleet Replacement Squadron], and the operational world, because they are the ones flying with it. If you want to limit the airplane, you can certainly do that. If you want to create unlimited opportunity, put in the hands of someone and say, “We don’t know what warfare looks like in 2030, we don’t know what this airplane is supposed to be doing in 2040. We have these particular missions that we know were going to operate, but what about all of the other opportunities that are out there?”
Let’s shift gears. Your military career took quite a turn – one minute you’re at TOPGUN, the next you’re on the battlefield in Ramadi, Iraq.
I left TOPGUN at the top of my game as a pilot – in fact, I was as good as I ever thought I was going to be. I had gone through this amazing experience as a TOPGUN instructor, and left TOPGUN not only as a Marine, but as the senior instructor on the staff. I was the training officer that ran the course. It was this amazing thing that happened, and I was really at the apex of my aviation career. The very next thing I did was volunteer to go and be a forward air controller. So I was suddenly back on the ground, back in Iraq, with a radio and a rifle and leading a team of Marines in this incredibly violent battle that I never anticipated being part of, which ended up being called the Battle of Ramadi. This was in 2006. As an aviator, I never thought that I would be a ground forward air controller, but that’s what happened. I certainly didn’t think that it would be one of the most seminal things that I would do in my career. Was I ready for that mission? Yes. Was I comfortable with that mission? Not even close. But despite how uncomfortable I was, and how different that environment was, and how in some ways I felt very much unprepared for being a ground FAC in urban combat, and how I was suddenly running around with a bunch of Navy SEALS that I work with now, I somehow learned to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
I can see where being on the ground during the Battle of Ramadi would make anyone uncomfortable.
There were so many different kinds of operations. You would go from doing something relatively benign to being in very dangerous, life and death circumstances where teamwork and communication is absolutely critical. And everything could change on a dime, so you never really had a chance to be comfortable. You just learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable, otherwise you couldn’t function effectively.
If you can share some of it, what was that world like for you?
You know, being part of a 3 Humvee presence patrol in downtown Ramadi is not cool. You are just waiting for something to go wrong. Whether that is getting lit up in a firefight, or having RPGs shot at you, you are literally just driving around and waiting for somebody to do something to you. Then you could go right from that to getting some intelligence that somebody you needed to grab was in a house somewhere in a totally different environment, and then you’d be off doing a raid. Then you might be a part of the QRF – the Quick Reaction Force – where you were literally stationed outside of the main base, waiting for somebody to call for help. Whenever those calls came we knew that something had gone wrong, and we’d get the coordinates and we’d mobilize.
I don’t think the average civilian stops to consider exactly how dangerous an environment like that can be.
A lot of time was spent doing what is called movement to contact. In a movement to contact mission, you literally take all of your folks out in Humvees, set up a staging area, and walk a patrol. You might be on the north side of this urban area, maybe it’s big and wooded there, with a lot of dirt, and you might have little ravines and trees and stuff. That would be your staging area. Then, 10 or 15 guys would go on foot patrol, canvassing this urban area from north to south. It was called movement to contact because you walked until you made contact with the enemy, and then you got into a firefight.
This is a vastly different world than what you experienced in the air.
I remember my first day with Bravo Company 228, and meeting the platoon commander for the first time. As I got out of my Humvee, he walked up with a shotgun hanging on his kit. I was the brand new guy, and I’m thinking to myself, “What am I doing here? I’m going on a foot patrol with a guy with a shotgun.” So, I tell him that I have a rifle. He goes, “To be honest with you, I found out that this is the best weapon for these types of missions.” And it turns out that he was right. From then on I didn’t go on one of those missions without a shotgun.
Take me inside the day in the life of a forward air controller.
My job as a FAC might be to get into a building and get up on top of the roof right away, where I would do cover watch. I had radio connection to airplanes in the sky. I had Navy SEALS on the ground. I might go, “This is what I see. This is what the airplane sees. Okay, you guys jump to the next building. Go.” Sometimes the next building would be 20 yards away. Sometimes it would be 200 yards away. So you would do these compounding movements, building-to-building, and when they would get to the next building, my other guy would already be up on the roof, waiting. He would give the all clear, then we would go to the next building.
There was one mission where we worked our way into a building in Ramadi. If you can picture it, half of us are on the roof and the other half are trying to move to the next building, when suddenly 3 RPGs hit the building that I’m in. The explosions happen right underneath me. The problem was, the other half of our team was 15 feet below us, so the RPGs hit above their heads but below us. The enemy fire came from a car on a dirt road near some trees. Thankfully, we had two F-18s overhead.
Please tell me your radios were working.
Funnily enough, in the Marine Corps they tell you the story that one day you are going to be in a firefight, and there’s going to be an airplane overhead, and it’s going to be a buddy of yours from The Basic School. Your buddy is going to roll in on his white horse – in this case a Hornet – and blast the enemy away. As an aviator hearing these stories I was like, “Right on. I’ll be the one rolling in on the white horse,” but the problem on this day was that I was on the ground. Well, it turns out that the guy flying the plane was a buddy named Boo Freeman. I radioed that we had troops in contact, and that we were taking fire from wherever, and on the radio he says, “Hey Chip, it’s Boo. What do you need?” That took me right back to TBS, but again, the problem was that I was supposed to be in the airplane and not on the ground when that happened [laughs]. I gave him the coordinates of the car in the trees and we got four passes from these F-18s. They did strafing runs on the car. At that point I knew we were going to be fine.
Following your military career you joined a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. Please tell me about Echelon Front.
Echelon Front is a leadership consultancy started by two former Navy SEALS, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. My involvement in Echelon Front had its genesis in Ramadi, where Jocko was in charge of a task unit and Leif was his platoon commander and second in command. My Marines were doing forward air controller stuff, and their SEALS were doing field stuff, so I got to know those guys really well and built a really strong relationship with them. After the Battle of Ramadi it never occurred to me that I would see them again, but we stayed in touch. They wrote a book together called Extreme Ownership, which became a huge success, and they evolved their focus into Echelon Front. The company started to take off, and that’s when they asked me to join them. I had the utmost respect not just for who they were as people, but also what they were teaching, so joining them was a no-brainer. I have been with them ever since.
In what ways did your military career prepare you for your role at Echelon Front?
The key leadership attributes that allowed me to be successful at TOPGUN in an airplane – humility, ownership, teamwork, and discipline – were the exact same ones that helped me to be successful in Iraq. These leadership attributes translated to the corporate world. You need to stay very much unemotional with what’s going on. You need to follow standard operating procedures to be successful and deal with dynamic environments.
I had to lead my Marines and keep them calm, and I had to make good decisions and do all of the same things that I had done in every other setting leading up that. In Ramadi, people were literally shooting at us on a regular basis. We were getting into firefights almost daily. If I could deal with the reality that I was in this crazy urban combat environment as part of the counterinsurgency, and if I could deal with all of the bad things going on around us and maintain my composure, then those attributes were going to play a huge part in the outcome. I relied on those attributes heavily. It started with being very disciplined, and with building good relationships with my team members so that I could rely on them in that time of need. And then recognizing that, although I wasn’t as good as I could be, I would continuously strive to get better. This approach certainly served me very well in Iraq, especially in the Battle of Ramadi. As I transitioned to Echelon Front, these experiences became the foundation of my message to our corporate clients.
Do you draw on your journey to becoming a fighter pilot?
Absolutely. There are some big picture things that I call strategic goals, and then there are the shorter range, tactical types of goals that you strive to attain along the path to reaching those strategic goals. You have to visualize what it is that you want to be, and where it is that you want to go. For me, I had a lifelong dream of becoming a fighter pilot. That was a very big strategic vision. If it’s a company, and you are a part of the executive leadership team, then you are likely asking yourself where you want this company to go. It’s not what we do as a company every day. The focus is on the bigger questions, such as the company’s strategic vision. Where do we actually see ourselves in future? What impact do we want to make? You can do the exact same thing with your family. What do we really want out of our lives? Where do we see ourselves raising our family? Those are big decisions wrapped around big dreams, which ultimate become your strategic goals.
The strategic goals almost act as a compass.
Exactly like that. You can consider these strategic goals your guiding light – your North Star. For me, becoming a fighter pilot was my North Star. But wrapped up inside of that are all of these smaller, shorter range tactical goals that continue to happen. Even after I became a fighter pilot, I wanted to continue to get better. I wanted to learn more about aviation. I wanted to learn more about fighter jets and how to fly them better. I wanted to be effective in war. I wanted to be a better instructor. I wanted to influence an organization like TOPGUN to be even better. And while those don’t all fit in the same category as this lifetime strategic vision, inside of that larger vision you have a whole bunch of other tactical goals that are constantly changing and constantly being pursued. These smaller goals are what reinforce the big ones. They don’t work without each other.
You set goals. What were the other difference makers that helped you reach your goal of becoming a fighter pilot?
I think what allowed me to be successful was a combination of two things. One, I was singularly focused on accomplishing the big goal of flying fighter jets. I didn’t care about anything else. Anything in my life that I perceived to create a potential risk of reaching that goal, or that didn’t contribute to me accomplishing that goal, I didn’t do it. Anything that didn’t actually help me get to that end, I didn’t do it. I refused to get distracted by anything that could potentially get me off the path to becoming what I wanted to become. I had the discipline, fortunately, to not get wrapped up in other things. I wasn’t a big partier, and I wasn’t someone who would go out and do crazy stuff that might jeopardize my pursuit of that goal.
Two, I did the homework. Initially, becoming a fighter pilot might seem like an overwhelming endeavor, and in some ways it’s a little mysterious, but the reality is that it’s a process just like anything else. There is a way to go about doing things to at least optimize your chances. Certainly, there are no guarantees in the military. We follow orders, and we don’t always get to choose what we want to do, but there’s a fairly straightforward methodology to accomplishing the things that you want. I did the research to figure that out. I knew that I had to pass certain tests, and I knew that I needed to study a certain way to prepare for these tests. I needed to go to Officer Candidate School. I needed to go to college. So there were a whole bunch of things required to turn this dream into a reality, and you actually have to know what those are so that you don’t get caught off guard. That requires preparation. It requires a plan. It requires a timeline and a whole bunch of other components. So, I did the work that was required to understand what I needed to do to turn the dream into a reality, and I got on a path and I stayed on the path. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be deviations and movement around that path.
At Echelon Front, you talk about hard work, preparation, and attention to detail.
There’s no such thing as luck by itself, the other ingredients include timing and preparation. There are a bunch of things that are inside your control, and a bunch of things that are outside of your control. I cannot sit here and take credit for all of the things that happened that got me to TOPGUN. There were a lot of things that played into it that I had no direct influence on – good timing, good circumstance, good fortune – we call that luck. But for any goal that is very daunting or that very few people are going to achieve, there’s a ton of preparation that is required. The true differentiator is to have the vision to know when the opportunity and the preparation reveal themselves simultaneously. If, in those moments, you are prepared, capable, and available to execute on what is required, the probability of achieving your goal goes up greatly.
Even then, there aren’t 100% guarantees.
The truth is, you could do a whole bunch of really hard work and things still don’t always work out the way that you want. That is just a fact of life. But if you aren’t prepared to take advantage of opportunities that reveal themselves, then you can’t capitalize on them. Those opportunities will come and go and the outcome won’t be what you had hoped. Being prepared for those moments requires a ton of hard work that most people never see. And it can seem, for the most part, unrewarding. Being very disciplined is critical for when those moments do arise. It’s the same in business. Good deals don’t fall in your lap. But if you’re prepared and the timing works out, you’re in a better position to take advantage of the opportunity.
You speak about being comfortable operating in the margins where you’re not comfortable, and making hard decisions. How do you deliver this message to your clients at Echelon Front?
A lot of times leaders don’t like making decisions when they are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the situation. One of the worst things, if not the worst thing that we could do, especially when we are uncomfortable, is to be indecisive. Look, it’s easy to make decisions when you’re really comfortable and you are familiar with the setting and you think you got a good handle on things. It’s a lot harder to make decisions when you are not comfortable. I get that feedback all the time, especially from young, emerging leaders. But the reality is that being indecisive is one of the worst things you can do. Conversely, one of the best things you can do as a leader is to make a decision and then start to move in some direction. This is even more true if you are uncomfortable.
Director of Leadership Development and Alignment Programs at Echelon Front
Can aggressive decision making turn out to be dangerous at times?
It doesn’t mean that you have to over-commit and be so overly-aggressive that you can’t maneuver and you can’t retrace your steps if required and go in another direction. But you have to start moving in some direction. You have to take action. You’re going to get some feedback over whether or not that decision was good. Once you start to move, you start to get a better assessment of what is going on, and then you continue to keep moving or you make adjustments. Otherwise, panic and fear and indecision can sink in because the environment can prove to be overwhelming. Combat is most certainly like that, but it’s true anywhere in leadership. If you don’t feel like you know what you’re doing, it’s only natural to feel that you don’t want to make a decision. That’s the worst thing that you can do, so I try to let people know that the best thing you can do is assess the situation the best way that you can, get the inputs that you need, make a decision, and then go in some direction and see what happens when you do that. Then, allow yourself the ability to make changes so that you are not the so wedded to your decision, and don’t lack the humility to admit that it might be wrong. You can’t be frozen in time, waiting for all of the information to reveal itself so that you can make the perfect decision. The perfect decision will never come.
Perfection is not attainable, whether that is in aviation or the corporate world. Mistakes are made all the time. Do you see mistakes as an opportunity?
I love the way you said that. Perfection is a lie. Perfection does not exist because we are human beings, and human beings are and always we will be flawed. What we hear a lot of times is that we want to attain perfection, and that we need to be perfect to be successful. You hear that from leaders all the time. The external view of TOPGUN is one where we are these amazing, awesome pilots and that our flights are perfect. The truth is, TOPGUN is made up of people just like you and me, and people make mistakes all of the time. Never once in my career did I ever see a perfect flight from anybody. Not at TOPGUN. Not anywhere.
In the corporate world, leaders who demand perfection from their people they are actually setting them up to fail. Think about it: If you have people that are working for you, what they want to do more than anything is to meet the goal and achieve what is being asked of them. When leaders tell their people that they need to be perfect to be successful, people will hide mistakes rather than admitting to them. Why? Since perfection is not attainable, they start to hide what appear to be really tiny, almost insignificant errors or deviations. These tiny little errors and deviations may be borderline insignificant by themselves, but over time they compound until you have a crisis or a catastrophic event.
The kind that take down organizations like Enron or Lehman Brothers.
Exactly. So my mentality has always been, and what it really should be for every leader, is to not ask for anybody to be perfect because that state doesn’t exist. Instead, identify everything that you are doing wrong. Think about the strength of an organization that says, “I’m willing to tell you about a mistake that I made that was so small and so insignificant that you didn’t know that it happened. I’m going to tell you about it because it’s going to help me, it’s going to help somebody else, and it’s going to help our organization.” In a culture like that, an organization isn’t hiding all of these tiny little mistakes, it’s focused on identifying them, which is the exact opposite of the normal pursuit of perfection. Suddenly you have this open flow of communication through which errors are identified, which in turn creates cycles of learning. TOPGUN does that. At TOPGUN, we are actually rewarded for telling people about the things that we are doing wrong so we can learn from them. The primary goal is for our pilots to be able to come back from every flight or mission.
It might sound counter-intuitive, but some of the best leaders fess up to their flaws. Do you think this makes leaders more credible?
Our ego is what keeps us from wanting to tell people that we are flawed. We don’t want to fess up, we don’t want to admit that we’ve done anything wrong. Our ego tells us, “Don’t admit to that because you are going to look bad. You are going to look weak. You are going to look small.” I’ve got news for you. There isn’t another human being in the world that doesn’t already know that you are all of those things. As a leader, the amount of credibility that you lose by trying to hide a mistake that you’ve made is incalculable. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the private sector or you’re in a squadron in the military. By digging in and not admitting your mistake it compounds the problem and it undermines your credibility.
The flip side is, if people know you’ve made a mistake and you stand up and say, “Look, I got this wrong,” then they immediately lower their defenses. That’s because they may be expecting you to defend yourself, or make excuses, or point the finger. The minute you take responsibility and take ownership of your mistake, you suddenly become a much more credible and effective leader. That’s how I approached it at TOPGUN or anywhere else I’ve been in my career. I would rather others view me as a standup guy who admitted to a mistake and then went and fixed it. I would rather someone say, “Dave didn’t blame me or anybody else. He took ownership of his mistake.” When you do that, not only do you get your credibility back, you get support from your counterparts because they realize that you are willing to take responsibility for the error.
That’s powerful stuff.
To take it a step further, think about someone who looks at you as a leader and thinks, “Man, this guy is so good. He never makes any mistakes. He’s our all-star player. He’s the best person on the team, and the person who consistently makes the best contributions.” Then you approach your team and say, “You don’t know about this yet, but I screwed up something the other day. I want you to hear about it from me, so that you don’t make the same mistake.” You want to talk about credibility! You already have a lot of credibility because people think that you are a highly effective person, and then you are also willing to admit, unsolicited, something that you’ve done wrong for their benefit. That type of leadership capital is really hard to come by. Those leaders can pretty much do anything, because now they’ve got an incredible group of loyal people around them who realize that that attribute of humility – admitting your mistakes – is being shared from the top, with full transparency.
What are your thoughts on empowering teams?
I’m a big believer in it for numerous reasons. As a leader, it’s impossible to be around all of our team members all of the time, so we want them to feel empowered to make really good, smart decisions on our behalf when we are not there. At Echelon Front we call that decentralized command, meaning that everybody leads.
How do you create that culture of empowerment?
Since it’s critical to have everybody lead, it’s critical that your people understand the mission. They need the proper training and resources so that they are empowered to make decisions that support the mission. And then we need to support them. When they go out and make decisions you understand that they are going to make mistakes.
How do you respond to their mistakes?
As a leader I take responsibility for those mistakes because I am ultimately responsible for the people on my team. Empowerment comes from not just saying, “I want you to go out to make the decisions, and I want to go out and do things that are going to help the team.” You have to take it a step farther. You have to show them that if they get something wrong, or if they screw up, that you’re going to take responsibility for that. That’s how you cultivate an incredible amount of loyalty from your people. Suddenly they are saying, “Dave is willing to let me make decisions on his behalf when he is not around, and even if I get something wrong, Dave takes responsibility.” That’s powerful stuff. Conversely, when you point fingers or roll the bus over someone, people are less willing to make decisions when you are not around. Why? Because the last time they screwed up, you got mad at them, or you yelled at them, or you blamed them. You can only get the most out of your teams when you empower them to make decisions and then take responsibility for their mistakes. I’ve seen teams do some incredible things when the organization empowers its people the right way.
Final Question: You’ve achieved great success in your life. If you had one piece of advice on leadership, what would that be?
You have to be humble. Without humility we can’t listen to other people, because we think we’ve got it all figured out. And if we can’t listen we can’t learn, and if we can’t learn we can’t get better. It doesn’t matter whether you’re flying fighter jets or a volunteer at the local food bank, humility is by far the most critical component to success.
