Articles
To My Fellow “Subjects of Investigations”
By Danita Darby 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....
Ep 170- Making the Call: Military Intelligence, Judgment, and Command with Lieutenant General Tony Hale
Lieutenant General Tony Hale, the Army G-2, joins Joe for a conversation on military intelligence, judgment, and decision-making in modern war. Drawing on nearly four decades of service, Hale reflects on the evolution of the intelligence...
Ep 169- Open Doors & Hidden Worlds: The Power of Curiosity with Brad Meltzer
On the release of his latest thriller, The Viper: A Zig and Nola Novel, Brad Meltzer joins Joe for an in-depth conversation on writing, curiosity, service, and the often-hidden moments that shape a life. From bestselling thrillers to...
Twenty Years in Fourteen Lines
By Joe Byerly The man handed me the document fresh off the printer. “Make sure you keep this in a safe place,” he said. “This is your proof of service. Probably the most important document you’ll ever own.” I looked down at the still-warm DD214,...
Ep 168- Culture, Process, and Technology with General Christopher Donahue
Send us a text General Christopher Donahue, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa joins Joe for a wide-ranging conversation on leadership, culture, and what it takes to drive real change at scale across massive, dispersed organizations....
Broadening with Purpose: Making the Most of the Army’s Broadening Opportunity Program
By Lyndi Dix During my time in company command, I was approached by a few mentors who encouraged me to consider the Broadening Opportunity Program (BOP) as I began thinking about what came next. I knew broadening was a common next step following...
A Body of Work
By Joe Byerly We start each year with the best of intentions, and then life happens. Dry January becomes Damp January. The gym membership app turns into just another unused icon on the phone. Weekly date nights, diets, check-ins with family and...
What Books Taught Me About Life in 2025
By Joe Byerly Since 2017, I’ve spent the final month of each year reflecting on the books I read over the previous twelve months. Without fail, a set of themes and lessons emerges from what initially feels like a random stack of titles and genres....
The Courage to Face Where You Are
By Joe Byerly For the second year in a row, I’ve traveled to Dallas for the Military Appreciation Bowl in an effort to talk to young men and women about the opportunities for serving in our Nation’s military. The multi-day event includes...
Would You Do it in Secret?
By Joe Byerly When I look back on a career’s worth of decisions, I can trace most of my motives to three sources: necessity, passion, and ego. The first is straightforward. I did a lot of things because they were required of me. I moved across the...
Are You an Ultralearner?
By Joe Byerly I recently finished Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career by Scott H. Young. This is an interesting read and in many respects can serve as the self-development bible for those addicted...
The Centurions: 10 Passages that Will Make You Reflect on War and Leadership
By Joe Byerly Recently, I read Jean Lartégy’s The Centurions. The novel follows a group of French paratroopers through their tour in Vietnam, time as POWs, their return to France, and their subsequent deployment to Algeria. Although it was written...
3 Lessons Books Taught Me in 2019
Since starting this website in 2013, I’ve included a year-end reading list every December. But last year I did something different. I took the time to reflect on the books I read and distilled 5 major life lessons from them. In doing so, I found...
Before You Commission, Read These 5 Books
By Oren Abusch-Magder Former Defense Secretary Mattis famously once wrote, “Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed before. It doesn’t give me all the...
The Goal of Self-Development: Knowledge vs. Wisdom
By Joe Byerly “For even sheep do not vomit up their grass and show to the shepherds how much they have eaten; but when they have internally digested the pasture, they produce externally wool and milk. Do you also show not your theorems to the...
4 Fiction Books I’m Excited About Reading This Summer
By Joe Byerly I love beaches and books, and this summer there are four titles I’m looking forward to checking out while enjoying the ocean. The Parade by Dave Eggers (Available Now) I had to snag this synopsis straight from the...
Can You Learn to Take Initiative?
By Joshua Spodek Chatting about my upcoming book, Initiative, a friend and fellow blogger, Joe Byerly of From The Green Notebook, asked if people could learn to take initiative. I saw his question as rhetorical, since he’d read an advance copy, so...
The Books that Influenced Adm. William H. McRaven
In a recent New York Times interview Adm. (ret) William McRaven shared the books that have most influenced his thinking throughout his military career. He offered the following list: On War by Carl von Clausewitz The Art of War by Sun Tzu The...
How Writing Books Gave Me an Education
By Joe Byerly This is the final question, in a five question interview with author Robert Greene. Joe: Because of writing, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with academics and those with advanced degrees and it can be a bit intimidating. You...
Leaders Worth Studying: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
By Joe Byerly This is the fourth question, in a five question interview with author Robert Greene. Joe: In your books, you’ve examined the stories of hundreds of leaders. Who are some great and bad leaders we should study? And what do you think is...
The Battle of the Three Selves
By Joe Byerly Here’s what happened this weekend: Friday: One more drink. One more hour around the fire pit. Then I’ll head home. I’ll deal with the consequences tomorrow. Saturday morning: What the hell was I thinking? I’m exhausted. The...
Two Salaries
By Joe Byerly When we compare jobs or career fields, sometimes we tend to default to one number: salary. How much does it pay? What will our financial quality of life look like? What are the monetary perks of the job? I hear this a lot from...
The Best Education
By Joe Byerly High school. Trade school. The Executive MBA. These are all education programs that teach us. The missed opportunity. The presentation we bombed last Thursday. The friendship that quietly faded away. We can learn from these too....
Compliance vs Commitment: Our Appearance as a Promise of Trust
Photo Credit: Donte Shelton, 49th Public Affairs Detachment By Sam Balch There are two common schools of thought about uniforms and personal appearance. Some see them as walking résumés, proof of what we have accomplished. Others treat them like...
Boromir and Faramir: A Cautionary Tale for the Ambitious Officer
by Major Colin A. Sexton In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the brothers Boromir and Faramir of Gondor embody contrasting responses to power, purpose, and personal ambition. Their story is not just a subplot in a fantastical epic; it is a...
A Cat, a Hat, and the Benefit of Constraints
By Joe Byerly In 1957, Theodor Geisel’s publisher challenged him to create a children’s book with characters, a plot, and all the trappings of a great story using only a first-grade vocabulary list of less than 250 words. He produced The Cat...
From Problem to Prototype: Innovating Dental Care for Large Scale Combat Operations from the Ground Up
By FiSamuel Reggans As the First Sergeant of a Dental Company Area Support (DCAS), I’ve long understood how critical dental readiness is to combat power, and that is no different in Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO). However, the doctrine and...
Skip Band of Brothers, Watch Andor!
By MAJ Proto and 2LT Phocas It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that nearly every junior officer has seen at least some part of the HBO hit Band of Brothers during their formative professional military education. It might even be safe to...
Advocating for Apathy
WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 13: U.S. Army (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images) By Nathan A. Ballinger If everything is important, then nothing is. – Patrick M. Lencioni I’ve spent enough years as a senior noncommissioned...
Lay Your Ego Down (The Lumineers’ Version)
By Joe Byerly I caught The Lumineers in Raleigh this week. During the show, Wes Schultz mentioned that he and his bandmate Jeremiah Fraites have been writing and playing music together for over two decades. If you are a music fan like me, you...
Are you Scared to Write?
By Joe Byerly Every time I sit down to write a blog post or record an episode of the podcast, something happens inside my head. A voice asks me, “Who are you to write or talk about this?” It usually follows up with an equally damaging...
City of Tomorrow: A New Cold War
Editorial note – This blog post is part of our Scribbles series. If interested in submitting creative content, view our guidelines here or contact Cassie Crosby at cassie@fromthegreennotebook.com. By Aaron Utsler Oliver sat in the drab wooden...
Are You Hallucinating or Communicating?
By Joe Byerly Ten years ago, I received the best advice I’ve ever received on communication. My boss said, if no one else sees your vision, it’s just a hallucination. In other words, if you can’t communicate the thoughts in your head in such a way...
Prepare for War
Editorial note – This blog post is part of our Scribbles series. If interested in submitting creative content, view our guidelines here or contact Cassie Crosby at cassie@fromthegreennotebook.com. By Ryan Crosby As a new 2nd Lieutenant,...
Who Are “We?”
By Cassie Crosby The Nation appears fractured with the January 6th assault on the U.S. capitol interrupting America’s most sacred democratic process. If you’re like me, and you’re watching the news 24/7, you can begin to feel like our nation really...
Communicate Like a Boss
By Ryan Crosby Effective communication is a learned behavior and professional skill, requiring deliberate practice, commitment, and consistency to master. At the mid-career level, the ability to communicate effectively is one of the strongest...
Social Media and the Problem of the Iceberg Bias
By Joe Byerly I’ve been thinking a lot lately about social media and the way it forms my perception of others based on the image they project through their social media platforms. I’ve also been thinking about how others must perceive me based off...
We All Need to Have a Little More Briefing Empathy
By Joe Byerly Have you ever been in a meeting and felt like a prisoner? It’s Friday afternoon, you are sitting in the last meeting of the week. The final briefer begins to speak. They see the clock. They know there are only five minutes left but...
Why Leaders Need to Learn the Skill of Writing
By Joe Byerly Anyone who has worked directly for a battalion commander or above probably has experience writing “ghost notes.” These are emails a subordinate writes and addresses for their boss to send to other people. Ghost notes can be weekly or...
A Tale of Two Influencers: Some Advice from the Cheap Seats
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness….” ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities By Steve Leonard and Joe Byerly Imagine, if you will, two influencers. One, young and brash,...
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