John A. Dailey
John is a former SOF Marine turned high-performance coach & writer. He helps others Plan, Attack, & Win to achieve their biggest goals using the same techniques that brought him success on the battlefield. His weekly newsletter, Walking Point, focuses on getting better at getting better.
Dig Your Corner
Important notice: Beginning next week, I will be switching back to Substack to send my emails. Most of you will not notice a difference. Walking Point will still arrive promptly at 6:00 Thursday morning, just as it has for almost three years. Some email providers send emails from Substack to the spam or junk folder. If you don't receive it next Thursday, please check there and move it to your inbox. I will send out a reminder from this email as well. Thanks! Sign up or share One of the...
Inspect what you expect
If you were forwarded this Walking Point email, you can sign up here and never miss it again. Sign up or share Amphibious Reconnaissance Co. Marines and their Navy Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) teammates undergo pre-insert inspection on the submarine USS Perch. The Marine Reconnaissance Foundation recently posted the photo above with its caption. In the photo above, a group of Amphibious Reconnaissance Marines and Navy Underwater Demolition Team members (The forefathers of the SEALs) stand...
Know your Lateral Limits
If you were forwarded this Walking Point email, you can sign up here and never miss it again. Sign up or share In the military, on every live-fire range, before training can begin, all shooters are briefed on the safety aspects of the range, specifically when they can shoot, where they can shoot, and what weapons they can shoot. Each range is built to allow for safe training within certain limitations. The left and right lateral limits are of notable importance, especially on ranges where...
Night Vision Goggles
If you were forwarded this Walking Point email, you can sign up here and never miss it again. Sign up or share As a young Marine, I was thrilled the first time I was allowed to look through a set of night vision goggles. They were not the cool guy quad goggles pictured above, but the goof-troop set of ANPVS-5s below. Still, I thought they were the coolest thing ever. They didn't work very well. The picture was incredibly grainy and pixelated, but you could sometimes pick up movement. Because...
Always Flexible
If you were forwarded this Walking Point email, you can sign up here and never miss it again. Sign up or share In case you haven’t spent any time around Marines, our motto is Semper Fidelis which means Always Faithful. Once you have been in the Marines for about five minutes, you hear the slightly derogatory version of the motto, Semper Gumby (Always Flexible). This is because things often (especially when you are a young Marine) go wrong. You are told to be at the armory to draw weapons at...
Units of Measure
If you were forwarded this Walking Point email, you can sign up here and never miss it again. Sign up or share Einstein once described the relative nature of time by saying, "If a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute, but if he sits on a hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour." A similar notion favored by the instructors at Military Freefall parachute school was, "If you have a problem in the air, don't worry, you have the rest of your life to figure it out."...
Start Upstream
If you were forwarded this Walking Point email, you can sign up here and never miss it again. Sign up or share I touched on this topic at the end of last week's newsletter, but thought it deserved its own story. As a young Recon Marine, I spent a considerable amount of time training in communications. It didn’t matter how sneaky you were or how close you could get to a target or how much information you could gather if you couldn’t transmit the info back to the people who needed it for...
Be Effective or Be Efficient
If you were forwarded this Walking Point email, you can sign up here and never miss it again. Sign up or share I was recently watching the Netflix documentary American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden about (you guessed it) the manhunt for UBL. It reminded me of something that I have long known. Our military and intelligence apparatus are incredibly effective, but not terribly efficient. The two terms aren’t always mutually exclusive, but they often are. We gain effectiveness at the expense of...
The Jack of All Trades
If you were forwarded this Walking Point email, you can sign up here and never miss it again. Sign up or share The Jack of All Trades The Recon 'Jack' Most of my career in the Marine Corps was spent in Force Recon. As Recon Marines, we were expected to take on any mission and accomplish it. As a result, we were trained in a wide range of skills that could be applied to solve a particular problem. We were expected to be able to infiltrate via submarine and small boat and then dive undetected...
The Pre-Mortem
If you were forwarded this Walking Point email, you can sign up here and never miss it again. Sign up or share When a patient dies, the doctors involved conduct a post-mortem. They gather together and review the actions taken, procedures used, and medicine given, then work to determine: Why the patient died What caused it and How it can be prevented in the future. In the military, we follow a similar process called an after-action review (AAR) after every mission. We define it as a simple...
John is a former SOF Marine turned high-performance coach & writer. He helps others Plan, Attack, & Win to achieve their biggest goals using the same techniques that brought him success on the battlefield. His weekly newsletter, Walking Point, focuses on getting better at getting better.