0:02 In the military, putting equipment in the same place every time isn't about making things look neat. It's about making sure that when seconds matter, you don't have to stop and think about where something is.
0:20 >> Who are you? [music] And where are you going? What do you want?
0:35 >> Hello and welcome to Business Lessons from the Military. I'm your host Kevin Bamal, and I'm here every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time to talk about military history, doctrine, and leadership practices, and then distill from those lessons we can apply to our businesses and professional practices. So, today's episode is called from equipment to information, everything has a place. And I'm going to be using as a military historical example the Battle of Isandlwana. I I you know, I got it right the first time. Um, which
1:12 was a battle that took place in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. This is I you know, you're Kevin, you're so obscure. Um, well, yes, it's just this particular battle, I think, will highlight what the the points that I'm trying to make um in this episode. So, um the sort of common historical uh narrative about the Battle of Isandlwana is that um the British lost
1:47 because um a soldier couldn't open his ammunition case, and and and the you know, British were overwhelmed by the Zulu army. Um that the the actuality is is more complicated than that. And so, this is why um I chose this particular historical example. So, I'm going to talk about five misconceptions and go over them from both a military historical and a business context. So,
2:20 >> [snorts]
2:20 >> uh when I I alluded to the um the first uh misconception in my uh teaser line, and that is organization is mainly about neatness. Now, don't get me wrong. As someone whose first nickname in the Navy was OCD, I have a abiding fondness for neatness, but that's not why organization matters. So, the question really comes down to why does then the military care so much about where equipment is kept? And the
2:57 answer is because this reduces the number of decisions people have to make under pressure. Right? So, if your equipment is always in the same place, finding it becomes automatic. You don't search for it, you just reach for it. So, in in the battle of Isandlwana Isandlwana, um which which occurred on January 22nd, 1879, a British force was uh camped beneath
3:32 the Isandlwana uh um in Zululand, um and it was attacked by a Zulu army numbering more than 20,000 soldiers. And the by any measure you want to use, the British possessed vastly superior technology including firearms. They they had Martini-Henry rifles, right? There was just There was from a technological standpoint the Zulu army was completely out outclassed. Individual soldiers
4:09 carried ammunition in standardized waist belt patch pouches that could carry 40 cartridges each. Um and but the individual equipment was only one part of the system. And so sustained combat depended upon ammunition moving from large ammunition stores farther back to the soldiers on the front line who needed it. And as you'll see as as I continue with this episode, that system, that organization
4:45 broke down. So think about your business or any business. I've been doing this a lot lately because I've been creating AI agents to handle a lot of the routine administrative chores that I have whether it's checking the status of the court cases in which I'm involved or revising notes on these shows after after the live um uh airings you know are over, that sort of thing.
5:20 Each one of those may only take me five or 10 minutes. But if I do you know, five or six of them a day okay, and that wouldn't be unusual, that means I'm spending an hour a day on these routine repeatable uh administrative chores. So if I spend um you know, less than an hour setting up an AI agent that will do the same thing day after day after day
5:55 without getting tired, I save myself hours every week of sort of mindless work that either will give me more free time or allow me to work in the areas that really will have an impact on my business, which is talking to people face-to-face, talking with clients, doing the hard client work that requires me to really think about how do I want how does something need to work, etc., right? So, think about the employees in your business who might spend 5 or 10
6:31 minutes, you know, looking for a contract or a customer's telephone number or the latest spreadsheet or a password or particular tool or, you know, a file someone renamed or the correct version of a presentation. So, 5 or 10 minutes, it doesn't sound that long, you know, in an 8-hour day, okay, well, let's lop off an hour off for lunch and 30 minutes off for, you know, breaks, so 6 hours and 30 minutes a day, that's roughly 500 minutes. So, 5 to 10 minutes, we're talking 1 to 2% of the work day. However,
7:08 what if your business what if that happens for each employee, let's say five times a day. So, 25 to 50 minutes a day, and let's say you have 10 employees, right? So, that's 250 to 500 minutes a day times 5 days a week. Do you see what I'm saying? All of a sudden, hours and hours and hours of time is being wasted, not to mention the frustration of looking for something and not knowing where it is, right? Um, there's a tremendous amount of inefficiency that's happening in your
7:45 organization. So, the business lesson is organization isn't primarily about appearance. It's about reducing friction. Okay, and that's that is really the theme here. So, the objective should be that the person who needs something knows exactly where to find it, right? That's that's what organization is. It's not about everything being all lined up neatly, you know, to please, uh, you know, OCD people like me, okay? All right. Misconception number two.
8:21 Uh, um, everyone can develop his own system. Okay? So, what happens when everybody has a perfectly good system, but they're all different, right? So, an individual system can work extremely well for an individual. Um, an organization requires a shared system. So, one of the things I noticed when I started, um, overseeing the this, uh, property management company that I mentioned periodically, uh, [snorts] was that how things were filed, when I
8:58 Well, first of all, I converted them to an online filing system, if you can imagine, right? So, I noticed the way that documents were being filed was sort of higgledy-piggledy, right? So, I instituted a standard way for labeling documents that everyone knew what it was and how it worked and could do it. And that way, okay? Everyone knew how to find documents that were filed, okay? And this is important because we have four main people, uh, who are are accessing
9:35 documents all the time, and two other people who from time to time help us, right? So, we have six people needing to find information, right? Now, I I prefer a system that is date-oriented, meaning that the you know, things are ordered from oldest to newest date, where the year comes first. So, the dating system, if you were to look at my computer, you would see the dating system is, you know, like like the dating the date for um uh July 4th would be 20260704,
10:14 right? Otherwise, if you use the the the names of the months and all that kind of thing, again, they'll be all higgledy-piggledy. Whereas, if you use year first, month second, day third, they will automatically sort in date order. And so, all we have to remember is a about the time uh period when something was happening, and we can go back to it, and we can find the document, okay? All right. So, um that is an organizational system in which everybody shares and has access,
10:50 as opposed to everybody filing documents the way they want to. And now, I know how to find documents that I've labeled, but I can't find the documents that another person labeled because they've got a different uh system, right? So, military equipment is standardized for a reason, and that is a soldier doesn't arbitrarily decide where ammunition or essential equipment or other issued gear will be carried. It's all standardized, so that any soldier can understand
11:25 without first learning another soldier's personal organization system. So, let's say you're in a fight and, you know, your comrade is is is wounded and and and he's not conscious and you're running out of ammunition. You're not having to search all over him to figure out where he's carrying his ammunition. You know, because there's a standard place where every infantryman carries his ammunition. Right? So, the British Army of that period had standardized equipment such as
12:00 ammunition pouches as part of the soldiers normal kit, okay? So, every soldier knew where to find ammunition on every other other soldier and that was a good thing. For businesses, um suppose you have five employees maintaining client records. One organizes them by client name, one by project, one by year, one keeps everything in email, one remembers where everything is and just has it up in their head, right? Each system may work perfectly well for its creator, but what
12:35 happens if that person gets sick and and is is out for the day, retires, leaves the company, or just simply isn't available when somebody needs the information. So, it's going to be difficult if not impossible to find, right? So, the business lesson is a system that only its creator understands isn't an organizational system. It's a personal system. So, standardization makes information and equipment transferable between people and that's important in
13:10 any organization where you have more than one person handling things. Okay? So, that was number two. Um everyone can develop their own system. That's a misconception. Nope, we need to have an organized system in which everybody shares. Number three, uh the misconception, if we have enough equipment, we're prepared, right? Well, so does it matter if you own something, but you can't find it, or you can't get to it when it's needed? I mean, are are those are those the same thing? And
13:46 obviously not. Look, you can possess plenty of a critical resource and still effectively effectively run out of it at the point where you really need it. So, this is where um Isandlwana um becomes particularly um uh relevant. And that is the British established a temporary um uh camp beneath the mountain, um and Lord um I'm I'm going to look at his name here to make sure I say it right. Chelmsford um
14:21 then took part of the force away in search of the Zulu army. And so, when the Zulus attacked, um the remaining British forces formed an extended firing line that was some distance from the camp, and in fact, too far away from their ammunition. So, as the tactical situation deteriorated, right, maintaining the connection between supplies and the firing line bec- became increasingly difficult, if not dangerous, right? So,
14:58 the important lesson isn't the popular story that, you know, someone couldn't open up his ammunition box. It's much broader. It was the ammunition existed, but the problem was getting enough of it to the right people at the right time in order that the British would be able to continue to defend themselves. So, the the business side of this is company says, well, you know, we have that information. Uh That's different from the employees who need it can retrieve it in 30 seconds or the the business may say well, we have plenty of inventory.
15:35 Okay, but again, that's different from it's positioned where customers actually need it, right? So have you have you been to a clothing store where you know, you see a particular garment that you want and but but the size is not on the rack and you ask one of those salespeople and and the person tells you oh, yeah, let me see. No, we don't have any here. You know, we need but let's see. Well, if you want to drive, you know, 50 miles from here, you can get it, right? Well, you know, not a
16:10 very you know, customer service oriented thing to say, right? But lot of stores have developed a system where they'll say oh, you know, what? Yeah, we don't have any more here, but they are available at our store X distance away. I can have it brought here later today or tomorrow if you want to come pick it up or I can have it sent to your house. We can go ahead and fill the order right now, right? So again, there's a difference between having the inventory and it being accessible to
16:46 customers. So the business lesson is um resources only have operational value when they are accessible at the point of need, okay? So again, the misconception is if we have enough equipment, we're prepared. No, we're not prepared until everything is staged where it needs to be so that it so that so that the resources are available to the people who actually need them. Let's take a quick break.
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18:00 or visit magnumprops.com. Okay. Misconception number four. Small efficiencies, they don't really matter, right? So, when does a minor problem become Sorry, when does a Yeah, when does a minor inconvenience become a major problem, right? So, I talked about part of this a a couple of a few minutes ago when we talked about how, you know, 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there, you know, five times or 10 times a day
18:36 times, you know, 10 people adds up to hours and hours and hours of wasted time every week. That is one area where minor if in inconveniences can become a major problem, right? So, but there's another situation, and that is what about when the organization is under pressure? So, a bad system Look, it can be perfectly adequate when the workload is light, but but stress exposes its weaknesses. And And this is, by the way, one of the reasons why I'm
19:12 spending time now setting up a lot of these AI agents cuz what I what I recognize is when I get busy doing these administrative tasks, it becomes really difficult to keep up with them. And yet, I want to keep the battle rhythm going, right? And so, if I can take them off my plate and have AI automated to do them for me, right? And maybe all I have to do is just verify they, you know, hey, AI took care of it. Great, you know, done. Um hey, that gives me more time to focus on
19:50 what really matters. And so, if a crisis arises, I don't have to be concerned that I'm falling behind on these other things, right? So, at Isandlwana, um under normal circumstances or under ordinary circumstances, ammunition could be moved forward from the camp. It wasn't, you know, that wouldn't have been a big deal. But, um the battle was not an ordinary circumstance. So, there were thousands of Zulu warriors attacking simultaneously. And the British line, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, was it was extended and
20:25 thin. So, the tactical situation was changing very rapidly. It was really degrading. And the defenders were eventually outflanked, and they were forced to retreat. So, every additional difficulty in resupply became put more consequence more consequential pressure on the um on the British to try and maintain their position. And in the end, the all these little problems combined
21:01 to the point where the British had to retreat. So, this gives an important organizational principle, and that is stress magnifies friction. So, if organization is fundamentally there to um diminish friction, right? In a crisis situation, that organization will make things run more smoothly during the crisis, right? So, in business, during an ordinary week, you know,
21:36 searching 5 minutes for a document, it may just be annoying. Um you know, and in fact, one of the things I notice, I'm I'm also using AI to um redo my website, and I wanted it to redo a section where the the on the homepage where there's some images, and it the and the AI needed the uh original images, and I went to my folder, my website folder, and I didn't I only had the images with the text on it, and the AI needed them without the text. I thought to myself, I must have them somewhere without the
22:12 text, right? And I I couldn't find them. They weren't in the appropriate folder. Fortunately, I knew where to download them, but you know, if if if today had been a really busy day, I wouldn't have gotten that task done because I couldn't have spent the extra 5 or 10 minutes to go to where I could download the the photos again, right? And so, you know, look, it was annoying, but it wasn't uh you know, cataclysmic. But, um what happens if, you know, a major client is threatening to leave because of something that went wrong, or the company's computer system goes down, or
22:48 a lawsuit has been filed, right? Or a regulator's requesting documents, or a critical employee suddenly quits. All of the sudden, the friction has increased dramatically, and what would have been annoying before is now just you know vitally well it's now much more difficult and it could be a you know something vital could be lost. A client could be lost, you know, a regulator could get really angry and and come down harder than he would have etc. etc. right? So
23:24 having systems that are organized in advance means that when and crises are inevitable, right? Let's let's can we stipulate to that as part of human existence? So rather than waiting for the crisis to hit, get things organized now, do do your best to anticipate how you would need to respond to the crisis, see how the organizational system work and then look to revise it so it'll work better once the crisis is passed. Right? So, um,
24:02 you know, the the business lesson then again is design procedures for the difficult day not merely for the normal day. So, the question to ask yourself is would this system work if we were operating under significant pressure. So again, uh, misconception number four, small efficient inefficiencies don't really matter. Yes, indeed they do and they can become critical um if if the pressure is high enough. Okay, and then number five, misconception number five, this is the last one I'm going to talk about. Putting things back
24:39 is a minor detail. Not true. Now, I I will say in my house as a kid growing up both my parents you put things back where you found them. If I took the scissors and used them and didn't and put them back in the wrong place and inevitably I would hear, "Kevin, where are the scissors?" And it's like, uh, you know, I didn't put them back right, right? And And look, I I learned you I need to put things back in their proper place. And there's a reason because somebody else
25:14 wanted to use the scissors, and now they can't find them, right? So, why should they be hunting around because I didn't put them back in the right place. So, um the reality is, um you know, it matter Why does it matter whether to put something back in the right place or in the same place? Because consistency creates predictability, and predictability creates speed. And especially in a crisis, being able to respond more quickly is a big advantage, right? So, this may be in
25:51 some ways the simplest, uh, lesson of the entire episode, right? So, um the purpose in the military for having a designated, um, location for equipment is not ceremonial. Um, it's because, um, if it's always located in the same place, a service member can find it quickly even in darkness, in confusion, in fatigue, or stress, right? And oftentimes, though, especially in combat, those are the conditions that are that are extant all the time to a
26:27 greater or lesser degree, and so not having to take the cognitive load of remembering where something is can make the difference between sufficient performance and failure, right? So, um the the this principle also extends beyond what a soldier carries. So, when it's whether it's equipment, ammunition, vehicles, supplies, uh, records, they all require storage in the proper place, accountability to make sure that they're returned to their proper place, proper replenishment,
27:04 right? All of those systems are highly organized in the military to make sure that they run efficiently and as quickly as possible. So, in business, we can apply exactly the same rule. So, every recurring item should have a home. So, if you have keys, there should be a key safe or a key box where they're all hung and labeled, so everybody knows where to find them. Although, keys are, you know, going to be obsolete pretty soon, I think. Same with tools, same with supplies, same with equipment. In the In that's in
27:40 the physical world. In the digital world, contracts, client records, templates, images, financial reports, marketing materials, all need to be properly filed in a way that everybody knows how to retrieve them. And [snorts] then from a procedural standpoint, so who receives an inquiry and who approves an expenditure, right? Where is that approval recorded? What is the follow-up? How does the next person know it was completed, right? All of that is part of setting up a process, a setting
28:17 up an organization, I should say. So, for example, on the all of these automated AI agents that I'm creating, one of the things I'm I've I've realized they need to do is to tell the agent just create after each one that you do, create a brief report so I know what you did, right? And in that way, in the morning, I can just go and look at my AI agents, they'll have blue dots letting me know there's something there I haven't read. I can quickly go through
28:52 them. I know what they've done, if there's anything that it couldn't do or miss doing whatever, I know it right away. I can quickly fix something and move on with my day. Otherwise, I'm sitting going, I wonder if it did it, you know, kind of thing, right? So, we can the this is the absolute brilliance of AI is it will do these repetitive tasks day after day after day after day. It never gets tired, it never gets bored, right?
29:23 >> [snorts]
29:23 >> In many ways, this is going to be a huge boon for humanity, at least for those who don't want to do boring stuff all the time, right? So, the business lesson is if something doesn't have an established place, every use creates another small decision. So, good systems eliminate those decisions, those those distractions, those cognitive loads. So, again, the [snorts] misconception is putting things back as a minor detail. No, that is not the case. Putting things back is
29:59 is uh facilitating the entire team being able to work together better. Okay, so some closing thoughts. Is Isandlwana uh wasn't about someone failing to put something back where it belonged. The defeat was a much larger problem. It was really that Chelmsford um divided his force, underestimated the Zulus, failed to adequat- adequately fortify um the camp, and left troops fighting along extended lines that became increasingly difficults to
30:35 sustain. But that And that's precisely why this logistical lesson is so useful and so important. So, the the British had superior weaponry and yet they fought too far from their ammunition in order for that weaponry to would be of any use, right? So, okay, they had these great Martini-Henry rifles, but so what? A rifle is useless without informa- without ammunition. And so, um in the end, the Zulus actually captured the
31:10 British supplies and ammunition, right? A disaster for them. So, the military principle is much broader than keeping things tidy, right? It's a place for everything, the same place every time, accessible to the people who need it, and a system that still works under pressure. And businesses can and should accomplish exactly the same thing. You shouldn't have to become organized when a crisis starts. Your organization
31:46 should already be helping you to respond to the crisis. So, if you look down below you, you'll see links to show notes. I I'd love to hear how you use organization within your company in order to make things work more smoothly. Maybe you'll share a little tip with us and we can all improve our organizations. I've I've shared some in terms of my how I'm using AI. So, may- maybe share something back. Uh it By the way, if if you are not a subscriber to Business Lessons from the
32:22 Military, whether you're on Apple Podcast or Spotify or YouTube, I'd sure appreciate it if you would click that that follow or the subscribe button, and that way you won't miss any episodes in the future. Okay, schedule of shows all Pacific time. Mondays at 10:00 a.m. Trust and Estates weekly. Tuesdays like today at 10:00 a.m. Business lessons from the military. Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m. People making money and every other Thursday at 5:00 p.m. Please join me at Jigger's Place. We'll have a coffee
32:59 We'll have a cocktail and a schmooze and we'll talk about all of the things that make life worth living like relationships and ideas and books and movies and all those wonderful things. So, I thank you very much for joining me today. Wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and signing off as I always do. Marie Darling, you are my bell. Curtain