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