Most people know the Blue Angels from the poster on a conference room wall. Ryan “Guido” Bernacchi knows what produces the picture.
Guido is a former TOPGUN instructor who spent two decades as a naval aviator. He was Commanding Officer and Flight Leader of the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels. Mark McGrath and I asked him to walk us through how the team works. The Blues turn over about half the team every year and rebuild their culture from the ground up each November.
That yearly rebuild is destruction and creation, which John Boyd wrote about in 1976. The team takes its old shape apart on purpose so it does not stagnate, and then it builds a new one.
Brief, fly, debrief
Guido lays out plan, brief, execute and debrief, which No Way Out has long argued is the most transferable leadership tool there is. Before every flight the pilots chair-fly, rehearsing the show in their heads to prime their thinking. Guido flew every show scenario in his hotel room before he flew it for real. In the debrief, the CO goes first. He accounts for about sixty debrief points per show and asks what he missed. That is how the team builds psychological safety. In formation flight, the CO also limits himself so the team can operate freely and correctly.
The fuzz
Guido separates alignment, synchronization and harmony, and says most organizations stop at alignment. When alignment and synchronization lock, the Blues have a name for what follows: the fuzz. It is flow, and something past it. Boyd called this implicit guidance and control, orientation so sound that correct action comes before anyone can describe it. Orientation sits at the center of Boyd’s real OODA loop, and the fuzz is six pilots sharing it. Guido says nobody can manufacture the fuzz. A team can only build toward it.
What did you miss on your last project, and did you say so first?
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Written by Ponch Rivera with AI assistance in production. The full conversation is in the player below.