Reader asks “Does your military experience translate to running a business? Do you still use anything you learned in the military today?”
Wonderful question reader. In short, yes. A lot of my experience and learnings from the military directly translate to the business world, although it may not be apparent from the outside looking in.
First I’ll begin with some context, typically during the morning after physical training sessions (that begin around 5-6am) the military has what’s called a “formation” to start the day. The troops line up and get guidance from their commander or leader, similar to a morning meeting or start of shift meeting. I noticed that the platoons were about 8 steps from each other, which was the wrong distance. Thinking back to my training I remembered the distance has to be 10 steps, so I spent 15 minutes organizing each platoon into their proper formations before formation began. Once our meeting concluded, once of the brand new privates approached me and said “Sir, the doctrine says that the formation needs to be 5 steps apart, not 10.” For more context, a private is the lowest rank in the Army. The general comparison would be a brand new minimum wage employee correcting a mid level manager.
First, it taught me to lead with confidence. Your teams actions are a reflection on your own. If you lead with confidence and with good intentions, that will get echoed down to the lowest level. While I’m sure some of the soldiers in the formation knew that I was making an incorrect decision, the decision was made swiftly and decisively, so they chose to follow based on the confidence that was projected alone. This is a valuable part of being a leader, because while you might not always be right, you absolutely must have your team be able to trust you to make decisions and to lead.
Secondly, this taught me the power dynamic that should exist in a leadership role. That private took a risk correcting me because he knew it was the right thing to do, and he felt comfortable bringing his opinion to somebody that could, if they wanted to, yell at them and make them push the earth (push-ups) for correcting an officer. However I started to realize that if I foster an environment that allows anybody (and I mean, anybody) to feel comfortable enough to speak up and fix something, my effective knowledge know extended beyond just myself, it extended to my whole team. The “power dynamic” should be this; you work for your team as much as they work for you. If the perception is that they only work for you, you lose access to ideas, you lose morale, and your run the risk of fostering a toxic environment.
Third, I learned that you can and should learn from anybody. This could be one of your employees, this could be a seasoned veteran. Listen to what your team has to say, they’re saying it for a reason. If you do this long enough, you’ll start to realize that the success of your business is the directly tied to the processes, culture, and leadership provided to your team. You’ll also find that the people who know how to make the processes better, are the ones that do the processes, not you.
Finally, to answer the second part of your question. Yes, In the military I learned the “OODA” loop. This is “Observe, Orient, Decide, Act”. I still use this every single day. If I notice we aren’t hitting a certain KPI, I observe the actions that affect the KPI, I orient myself to figure out the relationships between those actions, I decide whether to create a project, or reach out for assistance or what the plan will be to fix the KPI, then I act and execute the plan. This might sound simple, but most people skip the observe or orient portion and wind up jumping the gun.
Thanks for todays read and I appreciate the question that was sent in! I aim to do one question a week, but I can and will do more if I get backlogged.
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