The WAY to WOW Shows
Organize Your Business the Navy Way
February 6, 2024
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:00] military I'm your host Kevin bmel and we are here every Tuesday morning or morning on the Pacific coast anyway at 10:00 a.m. and 1M on the east coast to talk about B um military Doctrine military history the leadership practices of various uh military figures and apply them to our business lives so today oh here we go with the nose oh boy okay today I'm I'm I'm gonna I'm going

[0:36] to talk about the way the Navy um organizes itself at least administratively and show you how you can use that same system to organize your business now this Navy organization is uh relatively new to the Navy it's it's a a post World War II um Innovation if you will um and um the other services have adopted a somewhat similar system which

[1:11] I'll which I'll talk about when we get to the PowerPoint um the main thing is this system has um evolved over time and the the sort of modular n nature of it I think is what makes it particularly useful in the business world because as uh as a business grows and changes and develops as technology changes Etc I think we need to be able to reorganize our or reorganize our organizations as

[1:46] efficiently as possible in order to keep up with what's happening in the marketplace so let's go ahead and and bring up our uh our PowerPoint Okay so organiz your business the Navy Way um that's that's what we're dealing with here today and uh a as is the case with all of the way to wow shows everything we do revolves around the three pillows of attainment we're going to really be dealing with the finances Realm of the Pursuits pillar today um I mean it'll touch on on some of the

[2:22] relationships Realms with to friends and colleagues but but really that's of a a much less important nature uh today okay so um when we talk about na the na Navy you'll you'll hear this term opnav so it it stands for Naval operations why they made it opnav as opposed to naop don't don't ask me uh you know maybe opnav is easier to to to perceive who who who knows so the Navy

[2:59] again as is true of the other branches of the military essentially has two main parts so there's the um uh recruiting training and and and preparation part and there's the combat part I I shouldn't really shouldn't use the word part I should use aspect so what we're g to be talking opnav is really this recruiting training and and preparation aspect of it which for the most part is what we do in business in business we don't really wage war okay

[3:37] and and the when when a a Navy ship or when a a strike group um actually goes into battle so it it actually comes under what's called a combatant command which is a part of the military specifically designed to pursue a particular um strategic goal that the United United States has okay and that's that's completely separate from from what I'm talking about nonetheless what you will see in here are all the aspects that are necessary in order to

[4:14] effectively fight and that's what opnav does It prepares the Navy to be able to do its job okay um so the uh senior offic the most senior officer with within the Navy is called the chief of Naval operations or the CNO chief of Naval operations he's a four-star Admiral um couldn't tell you who the current CNO is actually it doesn't really it doesn't matter for our purposes and then there's what's known as a dcn a deputy chief of Naval

[4:50] operations for each one of these segments I'll call them okay and in in sort of Navy parlament they're called n shops and that's because each one begins with the letter N all right now in the um army oh in the Army they're called G shops now you might say well how come they aren't called as shops um I I I don't know why the the the Army uh um Ed the letter G I suspect it's because the G shops are run by

[5:26] generals right so in the Army the senior uh uniformed um per person in the in the Army is called the chief of staff and then you have Deputy Chiefs of Staff um running the the particular G shops in the Air Force you have as shops so the Army already had G I guess and so the Air Force said well we're the Air Force so uh they they Ed the de designations um as shops um the interestingly enough the Marine Corps doesn't use um the a a a similar designation so you have the

[6:03] common da of the Marine Corps the most senior uniformed member of the core um and then you have Deputy uh commants of the Marine Corps and so on down um but what what you would find this the Marine Corps has a a similar structure they just don't um they don't use a letter designation for them okay so talking about the end shops you're going to you're going to see we're going to look at how they're or organized in what they do now it it hopefully you you find it as interesting as I do that the n one

[6:38] shop the number one shop if you will is Manpower Personnel training and education so and and this is true by the way of of all of the branches the G1 the A1 it's it's Manpower it's people in other words it's it's recruiting people and making sure they're ready to do their job jobs that's the number one task of opnav it's the number one task of all the branches of the military and for our businesses it should be the number one task as well

[7:13] all right in the end even if we're a solo entrepreneur or whatever that term is we're a oneperson business if we don't know what we're doing we're not well trained and well educated in our field we're not going to be successful we can sell all we want of our services but we're not going to be able to perform well and our business is going to fall apart and that isn't to say that sales and marketing is important of course it is um but without the right Personnel who have the right training and education our our

[7:48] organizations are going to go nowhere just like in the military so this is why this is U N1 okay N2 n6 in the Navy deals with information Warfare director of Naval intelligence in other words it's the intelligence gathering apparatus within the Navy now you'll you'll notice in some cases there's a single n uh shop uh designation in other cases there's a dual one so over over the years um N2 and

[8:23] n6 were while they started out separately they were merged um because they had a a a similar enough function number one and number two um the Navy didn't need a whole separate um you know bureaucracy basically for each one of these functions so N2 and n6 um were merged together okay and I've I I did a whole series of shows last year on um on intelligence how to apply Military Intelligence to your businesses so I I

[8:58] invite you to go to um our YouTube channel at youtube.com theeway to wow you can look up those and you can see how intelligence relates to uh how Military Intelligence relates to uh the business world all right next is N3 and N5 and again originally these were separate n shops they were merged together N3 was originally plans and operations N5 was strategy and and and you can see why it makes sense to actually put them together now why they didn't just I don't know merge N5 and N3 and make it

[9:35] overall N3 that I can't tell you I I I I think it's because this allows them this allows the Navy to maintain greater flexibility so at some point um there might be a reason to split strategy back off and so they if they do that they just give it a they just make N5 separate from N3 again all right next excuse me so N4 is installations and Logistics all right and so installations are the landbased part of the Navy Naval bases so you've got Naval

[10:11] Base San Diego for example you've got um uh uh Naval Base North Island um which is uh where um much of of Naval Aviation uh is much of West Coast Naval Aviation is located it's also where Naval Aviation started um going back over a 100 years ago now okay um Naval base Ventura um which is actually made up of of two parts okay so those are installations and Logistics are of

[10:47] course the the supplying of material food um um armorment um um you know uniforms equipment all of that is is the supply of all of that deals Logistics deals with that and you can see the con the connection between installations and Logistics because Logistics is dealing with um actual materials of material objects generally speaking they're stored in on

[11:23] installations and then when a ship needs whatever um material it needs it either loads up at a particular installation or a supply ship goes loads up and meets the ship to do what's called an underway replenishment or an unrep okay so that's why these two happen because all the warehouses where goods and Equipment are kept are part of installations all right next integration of capabilities and resources so this is interesting uh N8 in that n's job is

[11:59] basically to work among all the other n shops to make them work to or to not make them but to help them work together more effectively right so there's a whole nshop devoted just to that now how many of us have in our companies a a an office a division whatever you want to call it who sole job is to be looking for ways to help interoperability within the company

[12:35] excuse me help improve interoperability in the company so you can see that this is this is a key priority now um oh that's funny for some reason I put N8 before N7 um excuse me this was not there wasn't always an N8 okay this I I I don't recall when N8 was developed but you can see that it was an important enough function from the Navy's perspective to give it its own uh Deputy Chief of Naval operations and to make

[13:11] sure that it was being um examined and implemented okay and seven War fighting development this is the sort of forward-looking how are we going to be fighting wars in the future and what are we going what are we going to need to do that excuse me so for example at one time drones were part of warfighting development okay um now drones are a part of um everyday operations in the Navy okay and and War fighting development is going on to new

[13:47] things so one thing is unmanned ships unmanned vessels okay to the best of my knowledge the Navy isn't actually using unmanned vessels in operations however it is experimenting with them and figuring out how can we use them effectively and of course there's a big advantage to using an unmanned vessel because if it gets sunk no people are killed right on the other hand um you you you you don't necessarily have on board the um uh um

[14:23] the brain power if you will to protect that vessel on the scene all right and so how do you deal with that um you know how do you deal with that issue and make sure that there's durability to that vessel okay and then finally N9 Warfare systems so this is what ties opnav most directly to the fighting aspect of the Navy right and dealing with all the Warfare systems whether it's uh Miss missile launch systems on a submarine whether it's uh systems aboard various

[14:59] aircraft and ships all of these have to be um dealt with in order to make sure that the Navy is is ready to um handle the tasks that are that are given to it by the combatant commanders okay so this is how the Navy looks at organization now what I'm going to do next is translate these into the business world and so what I did is created what I call B shops right B for business there you go I guess I could have called them oops like organization like but you know even if you have a

[15:36] nonprofit um you can still have you know uh you can still call them B shops or if you want to call them well n shops it's not that it's you know copywritten by the Navy but um you know probably don't want to call them n shops but uh I don't know NP shops or something call them B shops right this is the civilian um side of it or maybe call them C shops right the civilian inside so just like in the Navy I recommend you think of B1 the your your number one B shop dealing with your people okay as I mentioned a few

[16:13] minutes ago this is the most valuable part of your business without them bottom line is you don't have business I mean you could be running an airline and you're your your you know your jets are not going to do you any good if El you have people to fly them people to maintain them uh flight attendance to handle the passengers Etc you know uh etc etc right um booking agents to issue tickets and all that kind of stuff so I I recommend we think of our businesses first and foremost as uh I

[16:49] mean we we think of our our the the the the tasks or sections within our business first and foremost as B1 Manpower Personnel training in education what are we doing in those areas okay B2 now instead of it being an intelligence function okay I would suggest we make it the sales and marketing function and that's because without a steady stream of business again the business is not gonna it's it's it's it's not going to exist right so you can have the best people in the world and you need them in

[17:25] order to execute on the sales um that that that you generate the customers and clients that you generate but without customers and clients there's nobody to serve if you're a service business there's no one to sell things to if you're a a products-based business right so B2 I would say is sales and marketing and while intelligence is not solely a sales and marketing function as I've talked about uh as I talked about last year uh there is a large part of the Gathering of intelligence is going to deal with how

[18:01] you handle your sales and marketing Visa Vis understanding your potential clients and customers understanding your competition understanding the marketplace all of those we need to gather intelligence on them and then figure out okay so based on current market conditions who it is we want to attract as clients and customers and and what our our competition is doing so how are we then going to work our sales and marketing okay so B3 and B5 I think transfers over really just like B1 does

[18:37] in the sense that these are these are all functions that we need to be doing within our businesses on and ongoing basis so operations plans and strategy uh and and these things fit together um the same way they do in the military so we have the operational side of our business business if we're a manufacturer we've got our our plants and and we're and and we have um all of all of that um all of those operations to run the plants etc etc okay plans how

[19:12] are we going to expand operations change operations maybe we're going to shrink our operations um I I I spoke uh I spoke with someone uh this morning who is bringing um AI into his uh business and in doing so he's actually shrinking his staff now of course this is the fear of AI is oh AI is going to replace people well in certain respects it is going to replace people because it can do things more quickly more efficiently better than people do um however the people who are

[19:51] being um you know who are losing their jobs because of AI should be able to through training and education go on into something that's more creative that's something that AI at least right now can't replace that's that's the benefit of of this so in his in his PL as he looks at operations and plans you know he decided on a strategy level to bring AI into his business and so he strategized how to do that first then he put it into his plans and now he's

[20:26] operationalizing that decision so you see the same thing in the military or in civilian business all right next B4 um locations and Logistics okay um in in in the in the military we in the Navy it was called installations in logistics so I I don't know that we really think of our businesses as having installations in that sense but they do have locations so for example if we're a retail business we have all of our retail locations stores shops whatever okay we may have a company headquarters

[21:04] okay most while there are a lot of businesses out there nowadays that operate essentially totally virtually and so they really don't have locations at least physical locations they still have Logistics that relate to um how their business um deals with um so I guess easiest ways to give you an example so um I have a I'm working with a a company and it's a it's a virtual company so it has no offices of its own and it's

[21:41] talking to a prospective client and that client needs to get it some information needs to get the company some information in order that it can do a proposal for that client the the problem is that the the files the the potential poal client needs to send are so large they won't go through email right so we need a way logistically to transfer information so fortunately there are lots of solutions for doing that these days and to do it securely so um in this particular case I recommended using

[22:18] Dropbox and and and the company's already using Dropbox among the four partners and so they they're able to all see the same set of files and anytime something has changed it automatically updates to the other partners and so they created just a single file within their larger Dropbox file for this potential client and he can set up Dropbox on his computer and then just drop everything in that folder and Bang everybody will have it so that's a logistics issue and you can see how it relates to locations in this case

[22:54] in a virtual business um in in in a very in a way that makes a lot of sense okay now you you may have Logistics um similar to the Navy and that you have to move around materials you have to have at warehoused in order to keep production up and and that sort of thing um a absolutely so you may have at least part of your Logistics that is location based and again that that just means that it makes sense to have to have a B4 shop where the two are joined together all right B8 integration of capabilities

[23:29] and resources so I think one of one of the challenges that we have in businesses is the sort of siloing of different parts of our businesses so I'm gonna I'm going to go slightly outside of um what we've talked about um what we've talked about so far but you see this in particular when one company acquires another and needs to inte integrate those two companies um and and and take advantage of of the uh

[24:04] economies of scale the synergies ETC right oftentimes there will be some kind of integration team to look at those issues and figure out how to make them happen right so why is that relegated only to a time when you know two separate organizations are merging into one organization well I it's a obviously a great idea in that situation within our own organizations we still have a tendency to Silo people uh they they you know sort of set out

[24:40] their territory and they try and keep other people out of it most of the time if not all the time that's counterproductive to our businesses because the more the different parts of our businesses work together the the better it is it raises the tide for everybody so the idea of having an integration of capabilities and resources part of your business a B8 shop I think makes a lot of sense now you could argue well this isn't this the job of the CEO well yes yes it is but of course all

[25:19] of these are the job of the CEO and and while the CE in in a particular organization it may be that the most important role the CEO can play is integration of capabilities and resources that doesn't mean that um that the CEO can do it all on his own so let's take a an an example that's been in the news unfortunately for the company quite a bit over the last several years uh Boeing so Boeing is one of the two big commercial aircraft manufacturers in the world and they've

[25:55] had quite a few problems with their 737 Max uh planes so as as as I don't know if you've been following the story but I encourage you to because part of it at least is a tale of um um not good enough uh integration of capabilities and resources so Boeing made a decision a number of years ago to essentially Outsource various parts the manufacturing of the

[26:32] component parts of the of its of its commercial uh aircraft uh and it seemed like a a a good idea um at the time where where it's caused an enormous headache for Boeing is in bringing all of these together okay and what they're finding is small defects are are either not getting caught or they are getting caught but then to get them fixed because of the dispersed nature of the manufacturing process makes that very very difficult so I would argue and and

[27:10] maybe Boeing has this I I haven't looked at their corporate structure but I would argue especially in a company like Boeing you need a department at least um that all it deals with is integration of capabilities and resources right and and because there's so much coordination now what appears what Boeing is considering doing is bringing a bunch of stuff back in house well okay fine I mean nothing inherently wrong with that decision however just because they bring some of those manufacturing capabilities back in

[27:45] housee doesn't mean that they're going to necessarily be well integrated in terms of capabilities and resources so again I would argue that this is a crucial function and one that I that is overlooked by too many businesses all right so that's our B8 shop then B7 Shop product and services development oh I don't know why we got development development products and services development development anyway um so this is this is the futur looking part of a business right what

[28:22] are we whatever we're doing now in in in today's world it's unlikely that we're going to be doing the exact same thing maybe even 10 years from now let alone 20 30 50 years from now so and and a lot of companies have a you know a products or Services development although it's typically product companies do not necessarily services companies services companies I think tend to think of themselves as as sort of self-evolving but I don't know that that's the case so I'm in fact I I I'm

[28:57] dealing with a company right now where um I don't think Services development was ever thought of by the founder of the company uh to the company's uh you know detriment right so that's got to be built in right so that's the B7 shop and then the B9 shop in this case we don't need you know Warfare services but we do need technology systems so technology has always been a part of business now we think I think there's a tendency to consider technology as being a a

[29:34] contemporary um uh phenomenon if you will but even go back 200 years ago um when uh water power was being was first started to be used in um the in the process of Milling whether it was Milling grain whether it was uh um uh making fabric um that was a new technology think about when railro railroads first were invented steam ships um uh Coal Power well coal powered

[30:09] ships steam ships um going from sales and and think of going from a ship propelled by ores to a ship propelled propelled propelled by Sals right these were all technological changes the the printing press was a technological change right so techn technology as a function as a as a driver of change in business has been around for thousands of years right I I would say that the the the pace of technological change is faster today than it has been in Prior

[30:45] centuries uh and and and so that's what sort of militates in favor of having a whole department just for technology systems and again I I do think most not certainly not all but many many businesses um do have a a technology department now where I think the technology department falls down is there's not someone you know devoted to how can technology be integrated among all the other you know B shops in in in in this example all right so this is an idea for you to explore um um you know a

[31:23] a a an organizational system to try and by the way I don't mean for my examples of Bops to be you know the one way to do it not at all your your business um may need to be organized into a different set of B shops um and and by the way you may need a uh you know like a well here we've got one two three uh four five so there's no B6 here I know you may need a B6 shop um you know um oops wrong wrong way wrong way you may need a B6 shop or

[31:59] you may need a a B6 and a B10 shop or you know you your business um it may work better to have a B4 B9 shop maybe technology works best with locations and Logistics I can't you know I can't say without knowing the specifics of your business what I will say is the modular nature of this if adopted will make it easier for you to evolve your business over time and keep it vital and relevant in the marketplace all right so that's what I have for you today these links will all

[32:34] be in the show notes in case you have any questions thoughts comments feel free to to share them on social media if you've got something that's private you can always email me and here's the legal stuff okay we'll close this down and that's our show for today uh you know I I I again I I um I hope you'll you know consider at least playing around with some of these ideas um there's there's a reason why they exist in the military and why they develop the way they did and and look in

[33:12] the military of course um lives can be at stake and so um we need to be um at the at the Forefront of making sure things work um would that be the case always so for for example the Marine Corps right now has adopted um a um uh a program called Force design 2030 so it's it's about six years away and the idea is to examine the Marine Corps from top to bottom what needs to change what what

[33:47] well first of all what does the future look like for the Marine Corps what's the Marine Corps going to be doing in 2030 and how does the Marine Corps need to be changing now in order to make sure that it's ready for you know the the defense environment six years six years plus hence right so we all need to be looking at our businesses in that that strategic medium long-term View and this system will help give us the underpinnings to do that so thank you very much for joining me today I

[34:23] appreciate you tuning in tomorrow at 10: a.m. Pacific time is my show people making money and I'm going to be showing you how to create the entity for your business I'm going to be looking at a soul proprietorship an LLC and a corporation and for most of us given the tools that are available we can do all that ourselves whereas you know 1015 years ago we might have had to have paid a lawyer you know two three $5,000 to to do this these days I don't think you

[34:58] really need to do that unless you're doing something very specialized and then you may need to just get some legal advice but you can still probably do the the basic work yourself so I I I hope you'll tune in tomorrow again 10 a.m. Pacific time uh for that show and then uh starting uh starting next week on Monday at 10: am trust in Estates weekly I'll have I'm having a guest so I hope you'll tune in for that and we'll be we'll be back again a week from today for the next edition of business lessons from the military again thank you for joining me

[35:35] always good to have you on board and signing off as I always do Marie you're my bell