The WAY to WOW Shows
The Nature of Business: Part 2 - Fluidity & Disorder
April 4, 2023
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[0:12] hello and welcome to the way to wow business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and we are here every Tuesday at 10 30 a.m Pacific Time 1 30 p.m eastern time and an hour in for Central and mountain and we discuss business lessons that you can learn from military Doctrine from the leadership of of great military figures uh like like General George Patton and military history and for the last uh several shows we've been looking at Marine Corps

[0:50] War fighting Doctrine and how we can take those Concepts and apply them to operating our businesses making them more successful understanding better the environment in which business operates so I I do feel compelled to mention as as I do most times that I do not think of business as Warfare I I don't think that's an accurate comparison um rarely is business and existential uh

[1:25] exercise rather what what I what I do think is much of the thought and discipline that goes into warfighting and Military Doctrine can be altered in a way that it's useful for us to think about and apply to our businesses whether we're running the business or whether we work for a company and and and have uh some kind of leadership role within the larger organization and so that's really our taking off Place each

[2:00] Tuesday and um so so today and let me bring up my uh my uh presentation and let's see if we can share without it okay so we're getting close uh here we go slideshow okay here we go so um this is um the theme of our Show Business lessons from the military and oops I'm not sure why it's not working let's try this there we go okay um so as as I as I always do I want to put

[2:36] this into a larger context so we're dealing here in in the finances Realm of the Pursuits pillar of the three pillars of attainment but and as you'll see or if you've if you've um tuned into any of the previous shows oftentimes these Concepts apply to other areas whether it's relationships how we identify and deal with ourselves and so from from time to time I will bring it out uh and bring an idea out into that larger context so we've been talking about the nature of business

[3:12] okay the environment in essence within which business takes place and last week we talked about two concepts friction and uncertainty so friction is the idea that that things are never going to go smoothly there's always going to be tensions both within an organization and outside of it as we try and pursue achieving our objectives and uncertainty is is that we we cannot know necessarily what we're going to be faced with and so

[3:49] we need to be agile enough to deal with the the things that come up that we we don't anticipate so so looking so using friction and uncertainty as our our base starting point so this week we're going to talk about two more aspects of the nature of business and that is fluidity and disorder okay now if you can imagine let's let's talk about this on on the battlefield first of all so rarely especially nowadays does any

[4:28] particular military operation happen in isolation and in fact um I would argue that military operations typically go wrong when they're viewed in isolation right the idea behind any kind of military operation is it's an extension of a country or um if it's not a country some sort of organization like Isis it's an extension of their desire to achieve their

[5:03] objectives okay and so as we look at the process of achieving those objectives rarely is it a one-off kind of thing and and this is where um military again military operations oftentimes get into trouble because the the concept of them being part of a longer process if that's overlooked then the impact on a particular event isn't properly examined in terms of how

[5:42] it's going to work based on what's happened prior to it and how it will impact what needs to happen coming after it okay and um I I I I don't mean to go political as you know this is not a political show but if we look at the withdrawal from Afghanistan I think one of the issues that was not properly examined was the nature of the fluidity of that situation so how was that withdrawal number one

[6:17] going to be impacted by what had come before and then how was that withdrawal going to impact what happened afterwards it was viewed as too static an event and that's why in the end it didn't come off as well as planners had thought it would okay so the same thing is true in the business world rarely does any action I understand there's Siri Siri chiming in again she

[6:53] doesn't understand okay well thank you Siri so rarely in the business world does one action happen in isolation Okay in fact prior to this meeting um I was talking to um a fellow who is going to be taking on the uh the role of of overseeing safety in a large organization and we were discussing how the safety of employees it can't be examined

[7:29] as as its own Silo okay because by either the employees or management okay so if all employees are focused on is their own safety then they they'll never be able to reach their objectives for for the organization on the other hand if the company only look you know just disregards the safety of their employees they're also not going to meet their objectives because

[8:04] there's going to be too many people injured for them ever to get there effectively so safety needs to be looked at in the context of the fluidity of the organization as it's striving to reach its goals so to constantly work people to their absolute limits is very very foolish they'll be burnt out they'll be more likely to make mistakes that which could result in somebody getting hurt which

[8:40] could result in a key person getting hurt which now is you know could effectively shut down the organization the company's ability to to meet its objectives that would be very foolish on the other hand sometimes employees are going to have to push beyond what they think are their their you know push beyond their their comfort zone if something important is really going on okay for the larger good of of the organization maybe even for just the

[9:15] larger good of their fellow employees sometimes we're gonna have to over tax ourselves we shouldn't be doing that all the time but it's it's also not true that that it's it's never going to be a requirement because the fluidity of the situation is is is is going to require necessitates our looking back okay what has been leading up to this so if there's been days and weeks and months of of intense activity such that employees just can't keep up to continue

[9:50] doing that is foolish on the other hand if if things have been relatively calm and now all of a sudden There's an opportunity for a company to to help a particularly or to serve I should say a particularly advantageous client that will require extra effort on the part of the employees it would be equally foolish not to take advantage of that opportunity right because that could raise the company up to a whole new level which means it'll have more resources some of which can come to the employees

[10:27] right so so the fluidity of a business situation needs to be examined and situ and and decisions need to be made within the context of understanding the Ebbs and flows that happen within a company's operations and also by the way within the larger business environments okay so oh my gosh Siri that's driving me crazy I'm not sure why she's she's uh she's talking so much today

[11:03] um Okay so that's the that's the nature of business that I think sometimes gets overlooked decisions are should never be made in a one-off from a one-off perspective they need to be looked at as the next step in a chain of events that overall hopefully are going to lead to the company needing its objectives and then whatever that interim objective is moving on to its next objective okay and

[11:40] and of course we we I've I've talked about this in other contexts overall the company is looking to achieve its Mission which probably means acting within certain conditions of satisfaction okay so part of one condition of satisfaction since we were talking about safety should be creating a culture of safety with within the business or within the organization okay now that culture of safety again going back to

[12:16] what we were saying before shouldn't mean you know safety Uber Alice to use a little germ German right safety above everything else it can't it can't be that way especially if you're in some sort of inherently dangerous uh business let's say you're in logging right logging is inherently unsafe building a skyscraper is inherently unsafe okay so so there's gonna have to be some calculated risks taken okay um on the other hand foolish risks should be

[12:52] avoided at all costs right because those are the ones that are most likely to end up with people getting hurt or Worse okay so again fluidity is a a key aspect of the nature of business and it needs to be taken into account as as plans are made and executed for meeting the objectives of of that particular of that particular business or that particular part of the organization now related to fluidity is the idea of

[13:29] disorder okay oftentimes we think of fluidity in the in the sense of of a river where there's this channel that's been dug by the river and so the the twists and turns of the river are predictable but that's not the case there's a disorderedness to the business environment it has it it grows out of what we were talking about a minute ago uncertainty okay because there's uncertainty that leads to disorder

[14:06] right so along with the flu along with the fluidity is a sense of not necessarily knowing where the flow is going to take us and we need to be prepared as well as we can for that Disorder so if we have a very very strict culture of not taking of of of only senior leadership making decisions thereby

[14:43] essentially requiring that more Junior people do not take initiative we have an Enterprise that is not going to be able to deal with disorder very effectively okay disorder needs to number one be recognized so when something happens that's that's unexpected um and or that doesn't follow in plan okay even within the contingencies of the plan

[15:18] we need to have people within our company within our organization who can examine what's going on and if necessary act right then and there within the disordered environment to minimize the negative impact of that disorder and do their best to keeping us on track okay so um and I I may have told this this story before I'm going to share it um because I was just telling it to the

[15:53] the fellow I mentioned a few minutes ago uh who's who's going to be doing safety for this organization so when when my dad was a young officer in the Navy he was in Ensign he was a some anti-submarine Warfare officer and and his ship was um transiting the Atlantic and and going into the Mediterranean they were going to be making a port call in in southern France okay so this is in the kind of mid to late 1950s I don't I don't remember exactly what year it was but it was during that time and my dad was off duty but he was

[16:29] hanging out on the bridge of the ship just kind of uh you know watching what was going on and he noticed it as the ship was making its way through this one particular area of the waterways close to France it was it was heading toward a buoy a channel buoy and evidently at the time the French were very um particular about their buoys not getting run down um I you know I don't know maybe who knows why but that was that was that was the case right and my dad realized that

[17:05] the ship was not going to be able to avoid hitting this buoy and so Thinking Fast he grabbed a couple of sailors and they launched a small boat with the intention of pulling the buoy out of the way so the ship could pass it right and then they'd let it go back to where it needed to be and then you know they would they would you know get back they'd take the boat back to the ship and load it back on right so in their haste to get to the buoy to move it out of the way I guess they they basically ended up hitting the buoy with this small boat and they stove in the boat

[17:40] meaning they they they crashed the boat right and and um they're Foundry there in the water and of course the people of the other you know crew members on the ship see this and they they pull them out of the water and they get the boat back this little boat back on board the ship and um you know my father yeah he was an instant at the time he he goes you know and he puts on a you know dry uniform and uh the word is passed the captain wants to see him as as you might guess and the um so my dad goes and he's standing

[18:15] outside the captain's office the door is closed and after a few minutes the um the uh um uh executive officer comes out and he says okay Mr bemle the you know Captain will see you now and so my dad walks up to the captain's desk and he snaps to attention he says you know incidental reporting is ordered sir you know and the captain looks at me says uh yeah sit down Mr Bemo and my dad is like sit down sir and and the captain says yes Mr bemble sit down now in the Navy in the in the 50s and this is probably

[18:50] still true today when you're expecting to get chewed out you're not asked to sit down they do not yell at you while you're sitting right and so my dad is kind of mystified as to what's going on but he sits down because the captain told him to and the captain says so uh Mr bemble would you explain to me uh what happened from your perspective right and so my dad tells him about you know the channel buoying it was going to get run down and the French we were told the French are sensitive and blah blah blah blah and and so uh you know he and he was trying to move it out of the way but the captain says Ah okay and so for

[19:25] the next whatever it was 30 40 minutes they talk about what my dad did how he could have done it differently and and then they just sort of run through it and after after they're done talking the captain says all right Mr Ben will carry on you know my dad is just flummoxed right but he gets up and he starts to leave and as he he's as he told me the story he's just like he couldn't he couldn't take it any longer so he turns back the company he says he says sir is that it the captain says yes Mr bemle that's it

[20:02] and he says but sir I I I damaged government property I stove in the boat captain says yes Mr Beville I know you did he says but I mean what is going to be my discipline sir he says he says Mr bemel I am not going to discipline you he said I just paid the price of repairing the boat for you to learn a very valuable lesson and for me to learn a lesson about you my dad is just mystified and the captain can see it can see it on his face he

[20:37] says he says Mr Beverly says I can train you on to do many many important things but I cannot train you to take initiative when you see something happening that ought not to be happening he says I I can't train you to do that and now I know you will take the initiative so I can help you learn to act more effectively that I can help you to do I that I can teach you and and and you've taught me something important I have a good officer here so there's there's no point

[21:13] in me chewing you out you did the right thing it just didn't work out the way that you intended it to so carry on Mr Bemo my dad walks out needless to say that you know my dad told what happened because everybody was like what happened what happened I was like so he told everybody he's like I have this discussion with the captain um and then he told me to get back to work you know so here's the thing and this is how it relates to disorder there was nobody anticipated the boat running down a buoy a child abui that's just part of the disorderly nature of

[21:49] Naval operations right so which would have been worse for the captain the buoy getting run down by the ship the French getting angry you know making some kind of complaint through channels so the captain is of the ship is in front of an admiral probably explaining to him you know why did the Helmsman run down a Bowie after we were specifically told don't run down buoys right not a good thing to happen not a good thing to happen right so he had an officer okay the officer

[22:24] damaged the ship's boat but the buoy was okay so he didn't have to worry about the French all he had to do was deal with it within his own his own you know area a little area of the Navy much better situation for everybody for the French for the ship for the captain for my father and indeed because of the way he handled uh someone you know a junior officer you know responding to disorder people on the ship loved this Captain they would do anything for him because

[23:02] they realized that he was going to stand by them if they made mistakes as long as they were mistakes done with good intentions they were done to further the mission so to speak okay and it was a much easier thing by the way I suspect explaining to the Navy the cost of fixing the boat then you know America being embarrassed by having one of its destroyers run down a French buoy as trivial as trivial as trivial as that may sound okay so one of the ways of dealing with

[23:39] disorder in the business environment is to give our people our team members as much latitude as possible to examine the disorder and make decisions about how to respond to it this is I've talked about this concept before what they call the Strategic Corporal in the middle in the Marine Corps pushing that authority to act as low down the chain of command as possible we want to do the same thing in

[24:15] business if we're running a restaurant and we have an unhappy customer do we really want it to go all the way up to the manager of the restaurant or maybe the area supervisor for the restaurant we really want our Frontline people to be able to deal with it because that's the best way to satisfy the customer and prevent it from spreading into a bigger getting into a bigger problem I'm gonna make sure on time here good we're good right so

[24:51] do we want you look any kind of business is is happening in a disordered environment and if you think about what's happening in a restaurant it's it's sort of Controlled Chaos you have waiters and busmen and and and and customers moving through the floor of the restaurant and sitting down and getting up and going to the restroom going to the kitchen all this kind of all this activity is going on and and and orders are being taken and they're being delivered and and mistakes are going to get made you know no matter how carefully we try and control for the

[25:27] mistakes are going to get made and some customers are just not going to understand that once in a while they're gonna get something different than what they ordered right so do we want to you know have to have the manager come out and deal with it every single time or is it better to let the wait staff deal with it even if it means uh sir I'm so sorry uh ma'am I'm so sorry um you know it I I can see you're very upset um to to make to make that up to you that we made this mistake um you know dessert is on us or

[26:04] something like that right and and I mean the the cost of two or three desserts you know the cost to the restaurant not the cost on the menu is is it worth it to give our our you know our weight staff that Authority in order to to satisfy a customer rather than having the customer blowing up in the restaurant and causing a big to do but then other other diners are Disturbed I I don't know I I don't know the restaurant business to be honest but I think it's those kind of things are the are worth considering as we deal with these two concepts

[26:41] fluidity and disorder okay a customer this is actually I think a really good example There's No One customer in a restaurant if if a member of the wait staff or the bus staff has to spend an inordinate inordinate amount of time on One customer it's not just affecting that one customer it's affecting all the other customers that are currently in the restaurant and the ones who are going to be coming later okay it's causing disconcertion in the kitchen it may cause other members of

[27:18] the staff to be upset because they're having to pick up the slack while this you know while the the waiter or the or the busboy deals with this one particular um you know Diner right so the fluidity and the disorder of the environment have to be dealt with effectively and quickly right and so if we can push the authority to deal with that down to the lowest level that could make for a much better uh opportunity for for this restaurant to

[27:53] meet its objectives than having to pull the you know the manager out every time there's there's some kind of problem with the diner okay and maybe the the issue is you know the person deals with it and then at the end of the evening or the end of the day whatever or the end of their shift they report to the manager hey you know manager just want to let you know I had a really upset customer here's what happened here's what I did oh okay well all right you know sounds right or what you you gave them a free bottle of 200 bottle of champagne

[28:28] um maybe next time give them uh you know a couple free desserts which you know will set the restaurant back you know 20 bucks as opposed to you know 150 for that bottle of champagne or something like that that maybe that's a better way to handle it what do you think you know that kind of thing you have a discussion about it and then everybody learns Okay so fluidity and disorder they're inherent to business we can only plan so much and we and so we have to have ways of dealing with fluidity and disorder in a

[29:04] way that will allow us to continue toward meeting our objectives in the most efficient way and that is bringing us up to the end of our half hour together so just a reminder again uh the way to wow business lessons for the military happens every Tuesday 10 30 a.m Pacific time uh 1 30 p.m eastern time with an hour in for Central and Mountain tomorrow we uh we have our our other podcast the way to wow people making money it's an hour-long show where we talk with people who have interesting

[29:41] and and enjoyable ways of making a living and I invite you to join that as a to a to you know join me for that as well tomorrow we have a classic episode um coming up uh because it starts the the Jewish holiday of um of uh Passover and so uh won't be doing a live broadcast but I I invite you to uh watch the episode with my friend uh Dimitri he is a a wealth advisor and I thought his

[30:16] topic would be good for for two reasons one is it'll give you an opportunity to see someone who really enjoys what he's doing how he got into that business and second talk he talks about what is it what does it mean to be a wealth advisor to have resources managed by a third party and and uh you know my my blessing for you should be that you know everyone all everyone you know you all you'll need a wealth manager uh to handle your finances um because you know they'll be they'll be at that level

[30:51] so um the way to wow show people making money happens every Wednesday 12 30 p.m Pacific Time 3 30 p.m eastern time again an hour in for the other two time zones so join us twice a week every week and together we will figure out what success means and how to get there and that just leads me to my sign off and and acknowledging my my dear dear friend Marie darling you are my bell so thank you very much for joining me today hope you enjoyed it and look forward to

[31:27] seeing you next week