Growth

Tag: management

  • Military Skills in Business Leadership

    Military Skills in Business Leadership

    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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  • How Young Leaders Can Hold Experienced Employees Accountable

    How Young Leaders Can Hold Experienced Employees Accountable

    Reader asks: “Hey James! As a young leader in your organization, how would you go about holding your direct reports accountable when they may be older and more experienced than you in their respective fields?”

    Wonderful question. This is something I (Ironically as a young leader) have a lot of experience in. How do you deal with the tenured, experienced employee who has seen it all and done it all? I’ll answer this question in three separate parts: Role, Responsibilities and Process.

    First, let’s discuss Role. Let’s assume your role is generalized as a Mid-level Manager role (Operations Manager, CI leader, Team Leader etc), and your direct report is somebody who holds a specialized position (This assumption is made because “Experience” typically lends itself to more skilled position) so they have some pull in the work environment or may even be a specialist. The first conversation you need to have with that individual is Role. What is your Role in the company? In my case, I am responsible for the P&L, Safety and Quality of my business. Then you need to decide the Role of the individual. Are they a specialist? Are they responsible for maintenance? Are they a leader? How do they impact you roles? For this example I will assume you are a leader and they are one of your skilled employees (meaning not minimum wage) and your Role is to lead them and provide KPI’s to your boss that are positive. Let’s assume their Role is to be a member of your team and positively influence those KPI’s.

    This leads us into Responsibility. What are this individuals exact responsibilities? All too often as leaders we look towards the job description for the answers. “Participate in team meetings” or “Update team members” or “Create project timelines” are fine and well, but what do they actually mean? An experienced employee will find what works for them in lieu of specific guidance, and conduct their business accordingly. Let’s further our example and assume that your employee is consistently late. First, check the job description and see if it is an inherent responsibility. If not, it needs to be included and the change passed down through your team.

    Lastly, let’s discuss Process. “Don’t be late again, or else” – Somebody from the 1960’s probably – May have worked back in the day, but today’s generation has options. It’s an employee driven market and quite frankly, that answer is not good enough to be an effective leader. The proper way to go about handling this would be to default to the process. If an employee is late once a week, what are the steps you take? If the employee is late daily, what steps are there to take? These Processes need to be in place before you can begin to think about approaching the employee. I’ll give an example process below that I have used in the past that was effective;

    “Points Attendance System”

    10 Points = Terminated

    8 Points = Final Warning

    5 Points = First Written Warning

    3 Points = Verbal Warning

    Call in = 1 Point

    No Call No Show = 3 Points

    Late = .5 Points

    Points fall off after a year of being active (if you get 1 point today, it’ll fall off 1/8/2026 of next year)

    This can work for KPI as well, however I would caution you against disciplining employees for KPI related work. My advice would be to look at the process in its entirety as well as the machines or items that are a function of the process before you ever start looking at the employee. Fix the Process not the employee is my general guideline. Employee moving slow? Maybe the process isn’t efficient enough. Not sure if the Employee is moving too slow? KPI’s are not reflecting actual work performance.

    In summary, you might have noticed I didn’t bring up experience or age in most of my solutions. This is because neither of these should be the main driving factors in an employee’s performance. Experience can be a positive, but it can also be a negative. If your employee knows more than you about the job (this is the case 99% of the time) then you should be happy about that. Understand that your role as a leader is not to do the job, it’s to support your employees to do their job better, faster, easier and ensure everybody is held to the same, clear standard. I love this question and it really is a fun one because it focuses in on what a leader is and their role.

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