Andy Yakulis—West Point graduate, former Army pilot, and Special Operations officer turned defense tech entrepreneur—joins Joe to talk about leadership, transition, and the rapidly changing nature of modern warfare.
Recruited to West Point just days before September 11th, Andy entered the Army knowing he would serve during a generation defined by war. After flying Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopters and spending nearly a decade in Special Operations, he became increasingly frustrated with the gap between the technology soldiers used in combat and what existed in the civilian world.
Joe and Andy discuss Andy’s decision to leave the Army at 18 years to start Vector, a company focused on unmanned systems, as well as the challenges of military transition, the realities of leadership in the private sector, and how paying attention to what captures your curiosity might reveal the work you’re meant to pursue.
Why physical fitness and sleep still shape Andy’s decision-making as a CEO
The value of civilian education for military leaders
The “Saturday morning coffee test” for discovering what you’re passionate about
Why veterans shouldn’t feel pressure to find the perfect post-military job immediately
The challenge of leading teams in the private sector
How drone warfare is reshaping the battlefield
The concept of “attritable mass” and the future of unmanned systems
Why the future of warfare may shift from one operator controlling one drone to one operator orchestrating many
Whether you’re transitioning out of the military, thinking about entrepreneurship, or trying to understand how technology is changing warfare, this episode offers insights on leadership, innovation, and the courage to pursue the work you feel called to do.
If you don’t invest in the people who power your mission, don’t be surprised when the mission fails. – General Stanley McChrystal
by Edward Prueitt
The Army Talent Alignment Process (ATAP) has fundamentally transformed how the Army manages officer assignments. When the first full ATAP marketplace launched in 2020, the Army moved decisively beyond the legacy “faces-to-spaces” model to adopt a decentralized and regulated marketplace approach. Drawing from personal experiences as a recent Human Resources Command (HRC) Career Manager, survey data, and extensive lessons learned across HRC, this article presents three tactics as a proven approach for units, framed through the acronym WIN (Work Early, Invest in Transparency, and Navigate Challenges), to help units succeed in the competitive ATAP marketplace. Success demands more than passive participation. It requires deliberate preparation and proactive engagement to dominate the ATAP marketplace. From inherent complexities to turbulence driven by Army-wide challenges, the WIN framework offers units a disciplined three-tactic approach to dominate the ATAP marketplace.
Somewhere between microeconomics and managerial accounting, I earned a new nickname: “Unc.”
It started as a throwaway joke in a group chat. Our cohort of veteran business students attended a happy hour and I was the first to depart, headed to start my commute to the suburbs and spend time with my wife and kids; leaving the party first wasn’t quite a party-foul but it was worth a well-meaning jeer, hence, “Unc”. The name stuck. Soon, half my cohort was calling me that. At first, it made me laugh—I mean, I’m not that old (I continue to tell myself). But somewhere along the way, I realized that the nickname came with a certain expectation.
When you’re ten years older than the youngest in the room, five years older than the median, and the only one with kids, a mortgage, and a looming colonoscopy, people start to look your way when conversations turn serious. I didn’t set out to be anyone’s mentor (in fact, my last Army job was teaching and I was looking forward to being on the other side of the classroom) but when you carry a bit more experience, people notice how you carry yourself (doubly so in a learning environment). You don’t always choose that influence: sometimes it just finds you.
Randy Surles—retired Army Ranger and Green Beret turned editor, ghostwriter, and Story Grid-certified book coach—joins Joe to talk directly to veterans who feel called to tell their story but don’t know where to start.
After 25 years in Special Operations, Randy transitioned from the military to the writing world, studying under Shawn Coyne and helping dozens of veterans turn their experiences into memoirs, leadership books, and fiction. Along the way, he’s seen what works—and what doesn’t.
Joe reflects on his own year-and-a-half journey working with Randy on his forthcoming book—including the uncomfortable but necessary process of clarifying the message, identifying the right reader, and moving beyond “I just want to write a book” to “Here’s who this is for.”
Randy explains why most military memoirs never gain traction, why writing “for everyone” is the fastest way to reach no one, and how to identify the single reader you’re actually trying to serve. He also breaks down the realities of publishing—from traditional deals to hybrid models to self-publishing—and why marketing is often harder than writing.
I was serving as a battery commander in the 82nd Airborne Division when our guidon disappeared.
After completing a grueling Joint Readiness Training Center rotation, the battery transitioned to the administrative bivouac area to clean equipment, pack containers, and prepare vehicles for the long movement back to Fort Bragg. My First Sergeant secured a metal barracks building for the battery, marked by our guidon held upright in a rusted pipe mounted to the doorframe. It was not comfortable or impressive, but it met his requirement. Wherever our Paratroopers laid their heads, we would all be there together, from the most junior private to the command team.
The guidon out front did more than mark my location. It declared our home, affirming that this ground belonged to Alpha Battery and the fierce Paratroopers who had fought to claim it. After sixteen brutal days of relentless rain, clinging mud, and bone-deep exhaustion in the JRTC swamps, our Soldiers slept deeply that night, their first true rest in weeks.
The next morning shattered that peace. A section leader shook me awake with the dreaded news: the guidon was stolen, flag, pole, everything gone. My First Sergeant was already stirring, lacing his boots while growling threats for the thief. We formed the battery and stressed that the command team would investigate while everyone else pushed on with prep for home. To me, it was a maddening distraction from the mission. To him, it was a vicious slap against the battery’s soul and every Paratrooper in it but he agreed the priority was getting everyone safely home.
That priority did not last long. Post-breakfast, platoon leadership unleashed Paratroopers in a frantic hunt. Innocent questions turned to accusations; searches grew invasive. Units denying entry faced escalating fury. Shouts became shoves, blame soared unchecked. Junior Troopers stormed adjacent buildings, even battalion command posts, certain the culprit lurked nearby.
When my First Sergeant and I returned to the barracks, the cost was evident. Containers remained unpacked. Weapons still needed cleaning. Vehicles were nowhere near ready for rail. We formed the battery again and made a decision that felt necessary but deeply unpopular. The search had to stop. The priority was preparation and movement.
The disappointment was immediate and unmistakable.
To the Paratroopers standing in formation, it felt as though their command team had given up on them. In their eyes, we had chosen timelines over pride, convenience over principle, and appeasing our higher headquarters over the honor of Alpha Battery. In less than a day, the trust and cohesion we had spent months building began to unravel. Discipline slipped. Suspicion replaced camaraderie. The missing guidon itself was not the cause of that breakdown, but it revealed something uncomfortable about how we understood honor, respect, and loyalty.
I started writing this article in 2022, not long after that JRTC rotation, and then I set it aside. At the time, I told myself it was no longer relevant, or that it was simply a personal frustration I needed to let go of. More honestly, I was not sure it was worth saying out loud. I was not convinced anyone wanted to hear it.
Last week forced me to revisit that decision. Several troop guidons were stolen across my regiment, and with them I saw the same suspicion and erosion of trust I had experienced as a battery commander nearly five years earlier. As I ran in formation with my current battery the following morning, something else stood out. Troop guidons passed by road guards without salutes. What had once been a cultural expectation now felt optional. That realization bothered me more than the thefts themselves. It made clear this was not an old story or a fading tradition, but a norm quietly eroding in front of us, and one I had been silent about. That silence sent me back to the keyboard, convinced that this was no longer just a personal discomfort, but something I owed the Army to say.
We are starting to lose respect for one of the most important symbols in our Army, and as leaders, we seem to be doing little to stop it. In some cases, our junior leaders are actively encouraging its erosion.
This is not an argument against institutional change or growth. Both are necessary in an Army that must adapt to the values and norms of the society it serves. But there are some things so integral to who we are as an Army that we cannot simply accept their erosion as progress.
While early warning is indispensable, it alone cannot prevent the most dangerous forms of surprise. The real danger emerges when surprise is not a failure to detect activity, but a failure to recognize when fundamental assumptions have become obsolete. In that case, U.S. space power may be exposed in ways that even superior warning capabilities cannot address. In space, the primary risk is not what goes unnoticed, but what strategic thinking remains unquestioned.
To understand why this form of surprise is so dangerous, and why space power is particularly vulnerable to it, it is useful to distinguish between two fundamentally different kinds of surprise.
Situational vs. Fundamental Surprise
Zvi Lanir, an Israeli strategist and theorist of surprise, illustrates his core insight with an anecdote about Noah Webster, the famed lexicographer. One day, Webster returned home unexpectedly and found his wife in an intimate moment with another man. His wife exclaimed, “You surprised me.” Webster replied, “No—you astonished me.” The difference matters.
Webster’s wife was caught off guard by an unexpected event. Had she known her husband would return early, she could have avoided the situation. This was a situational surprise, a failure of warning within an otherwise intact understanding of the world.
Webster’s experience was different. What shocked him was not merely the event itself, but what it revealed: his assumptions about his marriage, his household, and his own understanding of reality were suddenly and decisively wrong. No additional piece of information—no earlier warning—would have prevented that realization. This was a fundamental surprise.
Lanir’s paradox is this: the more sophisticated a system becomes at preventing situational surprise, the more vulnerable it may become to fundamental surprise. Advanced systems excel at detecting anomalies within known frameworks, but struggle to recognize when the framework itself is no longer valid. Modern organizations, especially highly professional, technologically advanced ones, are very good at preventing surprises of the first kind. They are far less capable of recognizing when they are approaching the second. Space power sits squarely in this danger zone.
Lanir argues that this logic is incomplete. In many historical cases—Pearl Harbor, Sputnik, Vietnam, and the Yom Kippur War—the problem was not a lack of information but an inability to interpret information that contradicted the prevailing paradigm. Analysts correctly observed the facts but misjudged their meaning because they were interpreted through obsolete conceptual frameworks. In Lanir’s terms, situational surprises are failures of detection. Fundamental surprises are failures of self-understanding. Space competition increasingly favors the latter.
They checked the news first thing in the morning. Then again at lunch. Then one more time before bed. They waited for life to return to something that felt recognizable. It was hard to believe that leaders could be so casually selfish—treating the lives of entire groups of people as raw material for an ideology. Gradually, the work in front of them began to feel smaller. Easier to postpone. And more often than not, they caught themselves wondering why what they were doing mattered, when the world seemed to be falling apart.
Over the course of his sermon, he spoke to them about war, uncertainty, fear, and the temptation to put their lives on hold until the world made sense again. He spoke about the danger of postponing meaningful work while waiting for better days.
“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work,” Lewis told them. “The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
Dr. Guy Winch, bestselling author and psychologist, joins Joe to discuss his newest book, Mind Over Grindto explore how job stress quietly spills beyond the office—and into our evenings, our sleep, and our relationships.
What starts as a difficult meeting or looming deadline doesn’t end at 1700. It follows us home. From the “Sunday Scaries” to 2AM rumination loops, Guy explains how modern work keeps us stuck in fight-or-flight—and why we’re often blind to the ways we sabotage our future selves in the process.
Joe reflects on his time in command and the culture of constant availability in the military, while Guy highlights research showing that leaders have far more power to reduce stress than they realize. Sometimes it’s not about solving the problem—just showing that you care.
They also spend time on practical tools: reframing procrastination, managing rumination, cultivating a better relationship with your “future self,” and creating intentional rituals that signal the workday is over.
Why the dread of Monday is often worse than Monday itself
How procrastination is really about avoiding feelings—not tasks
The danger of treating your future self like a stranger
How to stop replaying failures at 2AM
The “Memoir Test” for putting problems in perspective
Why naming your emotions reduces their intensity
How journaling helps you spot recurring “icebergs” in your life
Why Instagram reels don’t actually relax you
The science behind clothing, rituals, and mental transitions
Whether you’re in the military, the corporate world, or building something of your own, this episode is a reminder that stress doesn’t stay at work—and that managing your inner world is part of leading well.
It’s Super Bowl weekend, so football is part of the lens—but it doesn’t stay there. The discussion moves from Bill Walsh and the San Francisco 49ers to Dyson vacuums, Raising Cane’s chicken fingers, JSOC, and even 50 Cent. Different worlds, same underlying question: why do some people and organizations endure while others flame out?
At the center is a simple idea: success is a lagging indicator. Drawing on Walsh’s leadership philosophy, Griffin and Dan explain why outcomes take care of themselves when leaders focus on standards, habits, and ownership of preparation—long before performance is visible.
From there, the episode broadens into leadership more generally: perseverance, the myth of overnight success, and how constraints can sharpen thinking instead of limiting it. A key theme is the idea of a permanent base camp—maintaining standards that keep teams within striking distance of excellence without burning them out.
They also spend time on legacy. Not wins or titles, but people. The episode reinforces a simple measure of leadership: how many people succeed because you took the time to invest in them.
What “bring your own pencil” really means for leaders
Alive time vs. dead time
How the path to the top is rarely a straight line
How to sustain excellence without burning people or culture
Why inputs matter more than outcomes
How culture becomes real when it carries itself forward
What legacy looks like when leaders step back
Why the best leaders make their ceiling someone else’s floor
Whether you’re watching the Super Bowl or leading a team far from the spotlight, this episode is a reminder that the work that matters most usually happens long before anyone is watching.
We have an authenticity problem, and everyone knows it. The troops know it. The junior officers know it. The staff officers definitely know it. And deep down, our senior leaders know it too. Everyone sounds the same.
Every inbox across the force is flooded with emails, talking points, op-eds, command messages, and holiday greetings that feel eerily interchangeable. Polished. Safe. Generic. You could strip the signature block and no one would be able to tell who it came from or what echelon wrote it. The reason is obvious. Commanders and staffs are using the same large language models (LLMs) with the same default tone, the same phrasing, and the same cadence.
Troops are not stupid. They know AI when they see it. They know when something was written by a human who cares and when it was generated by a model prompted to sound “professional and inspirational.” Over time, that distinction matters. It creates a credibility gap between senior leaders and the formations they lead.
Each morning, the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy got up and read his notebook of personally-curated passages from his favorite books (he later published this as A Calendar of Wisdom).
In his diary, he wrote, “I felt that I had been elevated to great spiritual and moral heights by communication with the best and wisest people whose books I read and whose thoughts I selected for my Circle of Reading… What can be more precious than to communicate every day with the wisest men of the world?”
Lately, I’ve started a similar practice. Next to my chair is a stack of books that contain short daily passages that I can read in maybe 2-5 minutes and jump start reflection.
The books and authors I’ve chosen for myDaily Circle of Reading focus on subjects that interest me, or on areas of my life where I know I still have work to do.
For those of you who struggle to find time to read and feel like time isn’t on your side—because you’re too busy, too distracted, or too mentally taxed to take on another book—this practice may be worth considering: create your own daily circle of reading.
In 2019, I hit a professional and personal breaking point. I was investigated as a “toxic”, or counterproductive, leader. I attempted suicide that year too. I survived both—and what followed was a long, humbling healing process. That’s why I wrote to you then (First Article, Second Article).
Today, I want to share what it felt like to be on the receiving end of an investigation—and what I’ve learned since about how leaders can better support those going through it.
I feel a responsibility to support others who find themselves in that same position. Having lived through both an investigation and a separation board, I carry two perspectives: the experience of the subject, and the responsibility of the leader.
To those under investigation:
You still matter. This is true no matter what you did nor what others accuse you of.
The first statement is not easy to manifest and believe when you are branded a “subject”. You need to have people in your life that will remind you of your worth (because it’s easy to forget).
The hard part is letting them. If you give those people permission to stay close, they can help steady you and pull you back up. Your leaders can—and should—be among them.
