0:00 from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and we are here every Tuesday morning at 10: a.m. Pacific 1 p.m. Eastern to talk about military Doctrine military history um and military leaders and how we can take those and use them in our business lives to to make our or our professional lives to make our businesses run better to be better leaders and uh and and um all all around um hopefully um uh use this vast uh
0:36 resource of of of knowledge and experience to uh improve our lives so I'm I'm going to do something U maybe a little bit different today um than I usually do and I I just realized I uh here we go okay let's see okay great um so I'm going to talk about one of the sort of fundamental aspects of the military and how we might um use this um in in to improve our businesses so um to
1:13 to give you a little bit of background so um in the uh postor War II era so a huge number of um people had been in the US military um mostly men although there were um uh there were women in the military um in fact um we saw the uh the wax the women's Army Corps the waves women accepted for voluntary emergency service that was for the Navy um there was also um there were there were female Marines um and I believe they were Fe
1:50 female uh Coast Guardsmen as well um and and um um after World War II much much of what these people um learned in military training and for that matter in military service whether it was support or combat service they they took to the civilian world and um as a result um America became um very successful at building for example large construction projects all over the world um and um
2:29 companies tended to operate on um very uh structured um organizational plans um it was there were clear lines of um of reporting clear lines of communication Etc um and um we've seen I think um a trend away from that recently recently maybe in the last um 10 years maybe maybe more more um where um uh
3:04 civilian um uh organizations they' flattened out their hierarchies gotten rid of a lot of middle managers and such um and um that that has certainly um uh helped companies operate more cost efficiently um but I I I'm not sure it's 100% clear that um it's it's created a an overall better environment um because I think some of the elements of how the military
3:41 operates are still missing so I'm I'm I'm going to go ahead and share my screen as I oftentimes do and we're going to talk about two things here today um first of all I want to talk about US Army ranks um and and because that will be the precursor then to understanding how the Army um organizes uh itself so um oops nope something got something backwards there okay so um in fact all the
4:17 branches of the military um are in terms of ranks or what used to be called rates and ranks um are are um globally if you will organize the same way so you have the enlisted they used to be called rates now they they call they call all of them ranks so you have enlisted you have what are called warrant officers and then you have what in this graphic they're calling um just officers but they they they they are actually what are called
4:52 commissioned officers now I'm going to talk historically for just a moment um the difference between the the three is enlisted personnel um essentially signed a contract to be in the military for a certain period of time warrant officers had what was called a warrant um which which was a a particular kind of document that um that gave them their status in the military um that was
5:27 different than a commissioned officer so a commissioned officer um had the most status and the the the difference between the three are and now by the way warrant officers also carry a commission so there's there's sort of a there's been quite a bit of blurring among the categories um en the enlisted ranks are sort of the the the um uh the ones who actually do the work so to speak speak okay so whether it's fighting whether
6:02 it's re whether it's uh maintenance whether it's preparing food whatever um the enlisted personnel perform those duties um warrant officers are Tech generally speaking technical Specialists so for example um in the Korean War if you've ever watched the uh the TV show MASH so often times the um helicopter pilots who flew the wounded to the mash units were warrant officers they weren't General Pilots those were commissioned
6:37 officers um they were um specialists in that type of uh Airborne transport if you will okay and then commissioned officers um are the are the leadership core or the leadership part of the Personnel in the military okay and um in in the Army the um the entry if you will uh inlisted rank is private and then you have a PFC a private first class you
7:12 have a specialist that has this very different badge than all the rest and then then you go th those are the those are those like I said kind of the entry level and then you have what are called non-commissioned officers or ncos so those are Corporal sergeants and sergeants in the Army anyway and then you have what are called senior non-commissioned officers or sncos and that starts with staff sergeant Sergeant First Class and sergeant major they're they're the same level it's just they do different things one is more concerned with Personnel the
7:47 other is more concerned with operations same with a um first sergeant and a sergeant major um first sergeant is dealing more Personnel issues uh sergeant major is is more sort of um leadership type issues and then um you have what's called a command master sergeant and sergeant major of the army so the the most senior enlisted person in the Army is the sergeant major of the army okay there's only only one of them okay and then warrant officers you basically have Warner officer one through five although I think the Warren
8:23 officer five is not being used these days I could be wrong about that all right and then commissioned officers um typically you start out your your commissioned officer uh career as a second Lieutenant that's that that gold bar there um and then you become a first lieutenant a captain a major a lieutenant colonel and then a a colonel or what sometimes called a full bird colonel as a that's to distinguish it from a lieutenant colonel um so you have you have what are called Junior officers the the fir second and first lieutenant and Captain and then you have what are known as field grade officers major
9:01 Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel and then you have what are known as general officers or flag officers I was having this discussion with somebody last week they said well flag officer what's a flag officer so historically when someone was a general or an admiral if you if you were in the Navy um he was a flag was flown to designate that he was on a post or on a ship and that flag would depending on what branch of the service he was in the flag would be a particular color and then the Stars would be some sort of contrasting color
9:38 okay and so in in the Army the um lowest grade of General officer is a brigadier general the second is a major general and the third that's two stars and then three stars is a lieutenant general and four stars is a general now there there is technically such a thing as a fstar general there haven't been any five-star generals in a long long time um it was a a rank created during World War I um because uh in in um England for example there was a rank not as a known as a
10:14 field Marshal which was one rank above a full General and there was a Sit it created the situation where um field Marshall um Bernard Montgomery um was reporting to General Eisenhower so a five-star nominally anyway was reporting to a fourstar and um that didn't sit well with the public and so a five-star general was was um created um Eisenhower was a fstar general so was um Marshall George
10:50 Marshall um I believe um at one point Bradley was also elevated to five stars um and there were some Five Star ad as well which maybe we'll talk about another time um and and again another historical note is the reason the United States didn't use the rank Field Marshal was it sounded too European too sort of monarchism army or five-star general sounded more you know kind of small D Democratic okay so um these are the
11:26 various ranks and the reason that's important is because as we look at the Army organizational chart you're going to see that as the units get larger the leadership of that unit gets more senior okay so let's let's now go to the next one hopefully this will be big enough to see well this is kind of small okay well so what you have here is is a basic organizational chart this right here is the the basic Army uh unit um large large unit anyway
12:04 is what's known as a division okay so um and and that's really what we're going to focus on um I'll I'll talk briefly about these other designations up here but it's really the how a division is built that I think is is most applicable for um our discussion so the smallest unit um in uh in the Army is known as a fire team and it's a group of Four soldiers by the way this is this really relates to an infantry division so an artillery unit
12:43 um Cavalry they're organized differently I'm I'm dealing here with uh W with with infantry so a fire team um generally speaking is made up of Four soldiers and um to go back for a moment it would be led by either a Corporal or sometimes a sergeant that's why these two um enlisted ranks have the status of of a non-commissioned officer because they are in a leadership position okay the other members of the fire team are going
13:19 to be privates and pfcs there could be another Corporal in the fire team as well um who's who's not a leadership position okay so you've got and it's a it's a very tight-knit unit trains together all that kind of stuff okay now if you put two fire teams together you get what's called a squad so a squad has um nine soldiers in it and um it's uh generally led by a yeah okay it's generally led by a
13:56 Staff Sergeant I want to make sure I got the right thing um so um a staff sergeant going back to this is the entry level senior non-commissioned officer okay but you see at these very small unit level it's all inlisted people okay now the next group up then is a platoon and a platoon is usually made up of several squads okay um and it it's typic Al a few dozen soldiers so let's
14:31 say you have four squads so that's about 36 uh soldiers plus the platoon leadership so you can see it's about three four dozen three three and a half four dozen soldiers okay and a platoon is going to be uh commanded by a lieutenant generally speaking could be a second Lieutenant could be a first lieutenant um it really um it you know it just depends on you know who is the Personnel available what is the level of experience of of the Personnel so um if you have a very experienced
15:07 second Lieutenant he he might um have a platoon or if it's a combat situation and let's say that the platoon Commander was a was a first lieutenant and he was um wounded or killed so then um his uh his number two may be a second lieutenant and um you know he would he would take over the platoon okay now next up then from a platoon is a company and a company is generally speaking three to four four platoon and you have about 200 uh soldiers in a company so let's say a
15:45 platoon is 40 45 so you can see three times that 135 490 plus the company leadership now okay that's where you get to about 200 solders okay and um uh the the company is generally speaking commanded by um a captain okay um going back to the ranks here for a minute now you see we're into the commissioned officer rank so a um platoon might be a second or or more
16:22 likely a first lieutenant company is going to be led by a captain okay and and then okay from from a company you go up to a battalion and a battalion generally speaking is three to five companies okay so it might be as many as uh a thousand uh uh soldiers um in a battalion okay so you know again a company's about 200 so four companies in a battalion would be about 800 okay and um
16:59 uh five would be a thousand again plus the B Battalion leadership okay so you know a battalion is already now um a pretty good-sized um unit um typically led by a lieutenant colonel okay and um you could um um you know it again in an extraordinary situation um you might have a battalion who is taken over by a colonel or you might have the major may be the um executive
17:34 officer in a battalion the Battalion Commander is killed or wounded and so the major could take over so generally speaking one grade um up or down is possible although you know usually it'll be a lieutenant colonel okay then next now for those of you who um are familiar with World War II movies you'll see in this case because this is how the Army is currently organized we go from a battalion to a brigade okay and you're saying wait a minute what happened to a regiment so regiments for the most part have gone away um in in both the Army
18:10 and the Marine Corps um they sometimes they exist for certain um administrative purposes but generally speaking um you know the way things are organized now is you take um a few battalions and that forms a brigade okay and a brigade could be anywhere from about 1,500 to say 3,000 even 5,000 uh soldiers so two to three battalions um and a brigade uh typically
18:45 will be uh commanded by a colonel or um it could be commanded by a brigadier general Brigade Brigadier General right so it it again it depends on what the situation is okay and then you put three or four brigades together and now you have um you know you could have anywhere from uh say I don't know 10 to 15,000 soldiers and you have a division typically a division is headed up by a
19:20 major general a twar general and and I I want to go back and note something so I remember talking to my dad about this and I said wait a minute dad a major outranks a lieutenant but how does a lieutenant general um outrank a major general that made no sense to me and I my dad explained to me that originally the two star general was a sergeant major general and of course a lieutenant outranks a sergeant major and then eventually they drop the sergeant part of a Major General and he was just a major general so um you know I've never verified that but it came from my
19:56 dad so I'm going with in his honor right um all right so what this structure does okay and then by the way above this so you have um what are called a core so two to three two to five divisions make a core that would generally be led by a uh Lieutenant General and then you have a field army or an army um could be anywhere from two to five core and that would be led by um a a full General okay um and then you know above field Army you have Army group and and and these
20:33 day so an army group um in World War II was typically led by a five-star general um oh well I I take that back Omar Bradley was uh was a group General he was a fourstar when he led the group um but then you had a what what they now call a region General so Eisenhower was um the Commanding General of scha the supreme Supreme Supreme headquarters Allied expeditionary Force okay and he was a he was a a theater Commander really he was a the European theater commander and so he was a five-star
21:09 general but we're going to stick with the division level so why is it organized this way well you can see that generally speaking the leader in any of these um groups has um direct reports of around three to four to maybe five people okay so if you're if you're the leader if you're a if you're a Corporal leading a fire team you you have three people that you're in charge of okay and if you're
21:46 uh leading a squad so you have basically Two Fire team leaders that that report to you if you're the leader of a platoon so you're going to have a few squads three to five so you're going to have three to five people who are reporting to you now by the way um once you get up to the platoon and certainly the company level you're going to have other advisors who are supporting you but in terms of your direct reports the the What's called the chain of command so three to four maybe five companies I'm
22:21 sorry three to four maybe five platoon in a company so you have three to five direct reports and the same is true of the Battalion and the same is true of the Brigade and even up to the division okay so there's there's a there's clear demarcation lines and that's important because it's not just a matter of of an order descending from divisional leadership to through to the Brigade leadership yeah to Brigade leadership to Battalion leadership Etc it's also a matter of information fun tunneling back
22:59 up okay so information from the fire team uh it could be of a intelligence nature it could be um information about the success success or or or lack thereof of a particular operation moves may move from the fire team to the squad to the platoon okay or you know it maybe that the platoon leader is out there in the field and he's observing what's happening with the fire teams and the and the squads okay and he he reports that information up to company and Company reports it to Battalion who
23:36 reports it to Brigade who reports it to division now you see these I don't know if you can see these lines here they're kind of small sometimes there will be direct communication between a company and division or a company and Battalion but you know in terms of a strict chain of command it would it would flow fire team squad platoon and then company Battalion Brigade and then up to division okay so if if and I've been trying to remember the book where I read this and I think it's I think it's who stole my cheese if you it's kind of a corny name for a book but they talk about how to
24:12 effectively lead in a business you you want to have a limited number of direct reports okay so if too many people are reporting to a leader in business it becomes very difficult to lead and manage all of those people and it also makes it difficult for there to be the proper funneling of information up and back down the chain of command and so by dividing things up this way okay um you
24:47 you have a much more a much cleaner and clearer channels of communication okay and I'm sure you can appreciate how important that is in in in in you know combat situation in the military but it's equally important in business we need that free flow of information so there's there's let's just take a um a retail store so our our our fire team would be composed of the you know salespeople on the floor okay and um there may be um you
25:22 know depending on the hours that the store operates so-called you know two or maybe there's three fire teams and they they kind of overlap during the day so the store can stay open maybe 16 hours a day right so um those fire teams um you know maybe you maybe you wouldn't have a squad in that case but they kind of form a platoon for that store right and so hopefully each of those fire teams of retail um PE clerks or retail salespeople are passing information up
25:57 to the platoon leader that may be the the supervisor or the manager for the store okay and that manager would hopefully then be passing that information up to maybe there's a district supervisor who's in charge of you know three to four maybe five stores in in his or her district and on up to you know Battalion which might be um you know a regional leader Brigade might be um you know U you know an entire state or you know an entire region of the country and Division in this case might be um
26:32 you know like the company headquarters if you will okay and what you can see is um while it looks like it's very hierarchical it's really happening on three levels so there's there's division which is sort of the headquarters there's the midlevel um and then there's the Frontline people and that that really gives again a clear demarcation of responsibilities but it also helps people understand okay um who
27:07 do I need to pass information up to who should I be taking direction from and that can be very useful okay it it can be very confusing if if there's not a clear uh chain of command so um we don't we don't think of uh business as being a a command type function um but but indeed it you know we think of leadership so in going back to our our ranks I once heard someone talk about the difference between what um non-commissioned officers and Senior
27:42 non-commissioned officers do and enlisted off I mean I'm sorry and com and what commissioned officers do is ncos and sncos Lead commissioned officers command okay and there's there's a big difference between the two okay so we talk about the leadership of um of commissioned officers but it's it's it's much more leadership in terms of this is what we're going to do this is when we're going to do it this is you know um
28:18 typically they won't they typically won't um designate how except for in the very Global Way okay and then it's left to um the uh ncos and the sncos to actually lead the operations because again the these um with the exception of the platoon are all led by ncos and sncos and by the way um sometimes a pluton will end end up being led by an snco as well if if the you know if the commissioned officer commander and um and an executive they don't really call
28:53 it executive but but the number two platoon leader um are both wounded or killed a platoon can easily end up being um led by a senior non-commissioned officer okay so we talk about leadership and we talk about command okay and and and that's a good way to break down how we think about our businesses um as well because our Frontline people are much better off in a much better position to really know how tactically to advance the
29:30 mission okay so if we if if we as um more sort of commissioned officer type leaders you know command leaders I use that advisedly because we're not we don't want to be commanding people in the in in the sense of that word but um if we set the objectives okay our Frontline people are in a much better position to know how to execute those objectives because they're coming in contact with the public with our customers with our clients um on on
30:05 a regular um basis so um that's that's the key thing here and that's the sort of takeaway that I would have you get from uh from today's show so there we go that's the Army organizational plan and how we can use it in our businesses and uh that that's our show for today so you like I said a little bit different and um hopefully um it it made some some good sense I'd be curious to know um I I do have another um show like this planned for uh I don't
30:42 know a couple three four weeks from now um looking at how the military organizes itself and how we can use that um to make decisions about our own businesses so um would love would love to hear your input and um yeah so that wraps it up for today tomorrow at 10:00 a. Pacific time um we will be my show people making money and I'll be talking with uh Kelsey and Aaron Holtzman and we'll be talking about um entrepreneurship and marriage and so I I I really encourage you to tune in for
31:18 that show I think you will find it quite quite fascinating and then next week uh on Monday 10:00 a.m. uh the next uh episode of trust in Estates weekly and then of course seven days from today will be the next edition of business lessons from the military so I thank you very much for joining me today wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and signing off Marie darling you are my bell all the best folks