The WAY to WOW Shows
Relentless Readiness Wins Wars
August 25, 2026
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[0:02] The military spends enormous amounts of time maintaining equipment that may not be used for months or even years. Why? Because when the order finally comes, there is no time to get ready. The lesson for business is simple. Readiness is something you build before you need before you need it. Today on Business Lessons from the Military.

[0:27] >> [music]

[0:27] >> Who are you? And where are you going? What do you want?

[0:43] >> Hello and welcome to Business Lessons from the Military. I'm your host Kevin Bemel and I'm here every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time to talk about military history, doctrine, and the practices of and the and leadership practices and then distill from them lessons that we can apply to our businesses and professional practices. So, as I teased before the intro, I'm going to be talking about the subject of relentless readiness. And how that is built into the military ethos and giving

[1:20] an example from my own career where that that ethos

[1:27] >> [laughter]

[1:27] >> went wrong. Um pret- pretty pretty badly wrong. Although fortunately no one was uh hurt or killed. So, the the I the there I think there's a um perhaps a misconception about what maintenance means. And that is maintenance is fixing things that are broken. Certainly, you know, if we think about our houses in general, right? Maintenance I tends to be reactive for most of us, so we're not we're not uh you know, maintaining our

[2:02] plumbing unless something breaks. Um and then once it breaks, we may focus on oh uh gosh, you know, what else may break soon uh so I don't have to go through this again, right? Um but something breaks, someone comes and fixes it, and then everybody goes back to you know, normal. In the military, maintenance is fundamentally about readiness. It's not repair per se. So, equipment is maintained so that it's available and capable when the mission

[2:37] requires it. And if you were to look at for example at the army maintenance at army maintenance doctrine, it explicitly connects maintenance with preparing and generating military power, right? So, the the difference is uh repair basically says, you know, how do we fix this now that it's broken, whereas readiness asks, will this work when we need it? And so, readiness is a program, whereas repair is kind of a one-off

[3:15] uh function, if you will, right? So, you might ask the question, why spend time maintaining something that isn't being used, right? So, the fact of the matter is in the in the military, um a unit can't doesn't control when it will be needed. And so, it has to be ready to execute on a task pretty much at at at any moment. So, um when I was with the submarine squadron, for example, we had an undersea rescue

[3:52] It hadn't performed a mission in I think a couple of decades. Right? And and yet it had to maintain readiness. So, I went through the training in order to be qualified from a chaplain's perspective to accompany the rescue unit if it had to go on a mission. And during the year and a half or so that I was with the submarine squadron, thank goodness I never I never had to deploy, you know, to use that that expertise that I had

[4:28] achieved. Uh and and like I said, it hadn't been used for a long, long time. And then lo and behold, I think it was two, three years after I left the submarine squadron and moved over to naval special warfare, uh another country had a submarine disaster. If memory serves, it was Indonesia. And that unit was deployed to help try and rescue the sailors. Sadly, they were unable to do so. So, but but nonetheless, the unit was ready to go essentially at a moment's

[5:04] notice, load up on its its transport aircraft and be on the scene. Right? So, this this again, it's fundamental. And we may think of it as, you know, well, they have to be ready to fight. Well, yes, but in the case of the submarine rescue unit, they're not going out to fight, right? They're going out to save lives. Precious lives. There are pretty much no more highly trained individuals than than submariners, as we call them. Right? And so, I mean, it's a tragic loss, of course,

[5:39] to lose anybody. But to lose such highly trained people is is, you know, can be extremely hard Um on a navy and its submarine force. So, once operations begin, whether it's a rescue operation or a combat operation, there may not be the opportunity to perform major repairs. And so, if equipment fails at the wrong moment, it can impair if not halt the ability of the

[6:14] unit to perform its mission. And and now a particular, you know, part of combat power or or, you know, mission rescue is can no longer be put put to bear in the situation. And perhaps, you know, that particular mission is not going to be met. So, the military builds maintenance into its normal operating cycle. There's inspections, there's preventive maintenance that's done, there's scheduled servicing, there's parts replacements, there's testing, there's documentation. So, all of this is

[6:51] designed to to comply with an under an underlying principle, which is that maintenance, as much as possible, converts unpredictable future failures into manageable present tasks. Okay? And and and and so, that that is, you know, central to how any unit, whether we're talking about small arms, whether we're talking about some sort of, you know, motorized unit, you know, a tank platoon,

[7:27] or whether we're talking about aircraft that are, you know, flown by the Air Force or Naval Aviation, all of these things have to be ready. So, it it people, I think, out outside of the military to well, but you know, you have a maintenance department. They just take care of all that, right? So, the maintenance department is, of course, a crucial part of unit readiness, but it is not actually responsible for unit readiness. In fact, the commanding officer of the

[8:02] unit is responsible for the unit's readiness. And part of his fitness report is, we call them in in the in the Navy, they have different names in the other service branches. Part of of the rating he gets on his fitness report relates directly to the readiness of his unit. I'm going to talk about that a little bit more uh when I when I give the example. So, operators um main- maintainers, they have a responsibility to um help maintain the equipment, but it's

[8:37] it's the operators of the individual piece of equipment that actually have the responsibility to see that it can operate. So, for example, in naval aviation, uh you may say, well, the pilot is the operator. Well, that's true, but the the actual operator in this case is the plane captain. And I've talked about plane captains in the Navy before. They're generally the most junior sailors in a squadron, and they can be 18, 19 years old. They are responsible

[9:13] for whether that aircraft is ready to fly or not. Okay? And they make the final decision as to whether it leaves a carrier deck. Right? They have maintainers to help them. They have more senior people from whom they can learn, but they have the responsibility for the equipment they operate. But in the end, it is the squadron CO who has the ultimate responsibility for whether that squadron is prepared to fly its missions or not. Right? And And why is it set up

[9:49] this way? Well, the person closest to the piece of equipment is often the first person to be able to identify when there's a problem. Right? So, the plane captain is constantly inspecting that aircraft to make sure that all of its systems from landing gear, fuel, avionics, uh surfaces are in proper repair and the and the plane is ready to leave the deck. Right? And then they report that up the chain of command. Right? So,

[10:26] since they're the one constantly overseeing the aircraft, they're the one who's is most likely going to identify a problem. The pilot who flies the aircraft but has other responsibilities as well, okay? He's less likely to have the the time and focused attention that it takes to make sure that their aircraft is ready to leave the deck of an aircraft carrier. So, responsibility is distributed in that way so that everybody has a stake in unit readiness,

[11:03] uh but accountability in the hands of the commanding officer for the unit's overall red overall readiness is is centralized and and one person in the end can be held accountable if if a unit is not ready to go. So, this this is the military's logic, right? Everyone contributes to readiness, but the commander owns the results, okay? So, accountability can be maintained. So, how do you know whether you're actually ready? If you're a If you're a commander

[11:39] of a unit, how do you know if you're actually ready, right? So, the the military measures readiness, right? It doesn't ask commanders whether they feel like they're ready, okay? Equipment status is tracked, deficiencies are identified, readiness reports uh should expose what's preventing a unit from being fully mission capable, right? Uh and now, this can create a somewhat uncomfortable, but valuable level of discipline. So,

[12:15] leaders have to know what they actually have ready to go, and they also have to know what doesn't work, and and they have to know what resources are available to correct those deficiencies. So, all of those things are tracked. And again, I'm going to talk a little bit more about this uh when when I get to the to the to the example, and you'll see how how this works. So, readiness requires honesty, and when when that integrity is lacking, the results can be um

[12:52] cataclysmic may be a little bit too strong, but they can certainly be very severe. So, readiness is bigger than equipment. So, equipment ready equipment repair and all that, it's important, but they're also but personnel also have to be ready to go. Are they trained? Are there replacements available if somebody gets sick, gets injured, has to drop out at the last moment? Can the unit operate if key personnel are unavailable? Are you know, are logistics ready to go?

[13:30] Is is there proper um supply lines for for supplying fuel, ammunition, spare parts, tools? Are they available and can they get in the case of an aviation squadron to the ship? And then procedural readiness. Do people know what to do? Have the procedures been practiced? Can the organization execute under pressure? And this gets down to the training that is constant with units, certainly when they're in

[14:05] garrison, but also even when they're deployed, there will be training, ongoing training when they're not in any kind of active operations. It's not like they sit around doing nothing, okay? So, readiness is the ability to perform the mission when required. So, when I was with Carrier Air Wing 14, uh we deployed on board the USS Ronald Reagan. That was our ship. And we in the beginning of 2012, we were set to deploy

[14:43] to do what's called a Westpac, which is a deployment to the Western Pacific. Uh we were we had plans to make a quick stop in Japan and then from there go on and participate in a an exercise called Foal Eagle with that was based in Korea. And then from there, we would sail on down the East Coast of Asia and around into the Indian Ocean making you know, a couple of port calls at least and then on into the um it it into the

[15:18] Indian Ocean south of um south of Afghanistan and Iraq where we were going to fly combat support with with Marines on the ground and then from there into the Persian Gulf for a stop at Bahrain and then you know whatever else we got tasked to do from there. In the event

[15:41] >> [laughter]

[15:43] >> Now you would think okay so if you're the if you're the commanding officer of a squadron right what are you rated on well you're rated on the ability of your units to fly to to to you know lay ordinance you know in close air support and all that kind of thing but that is actually only one part of the the aspects on which a squadron CO is is rated and in in my arrow wing we had

[16:20] 1 2 3 4 5 we had six six or seven I have to think about this for a minute wait a minute. No four we had four fighter squadrons we had command and control squadron makes five a helo squadron six and electronic warfare squadron seven and then we had a detachment of a of a replenishment squadron so we basically had not eight full squadrons but but seven squadrons and and a partial squadron okay all of those CEOs were competing against each other to become one of seven or

[16:56] basically to be the top one and the the squadron commanding officer who who was one of seven coming out of the deployment was actually the lieutenant colonel who was the commanding officer of the the sole Marine Corps fighter squadron that we had in the air wing. And it was quite amazing because despite and I've talked about this before, despite having the oldest aircraft certainly in the squadron and among the

[17:32] very oldest in the fleet, he had the highest percentage of uptime, meaning his jets were ready to fly at a higher percentage than any other squadron, including squadrons that had that had been re-equipped just within the last few years and so had the most recent version of the FA-18, you know, that that that their pilots were flying. And it was it was largely because of his readiness to be able to fly that he was one of

[18:08] seven. Okay? And I'm not saying his pilots weren't good. They certainly were. Almost all the pilots in naval naval aviation are highly highly skilled. But it doesn't mean anything if the aircraft aren't operational and available to fly. So, you can have you can have great pilots, but if they can't get airborne, who cares, right? Um and and if an aircraft can't fly and provide close close support for troops or if a helo can't perform rescue or resupply

[18:44] operations, if their systems can't communicate with the ship, that particular squadron is of absolutely no use. And so for for this Marine Corps squadron in particular, the the the real question was how do we make highly sophisticated equipment ready to fly thousands of miles from our base, right? And here's one of the added problems. The aircraft were so old, the manufacturers had stopped manufacturing

[19:21] replacement parts in some cases. And so, the the uh the the Marines who were in uh the supply side of maintenance were constantly on email and even phones off the ship calling literally all over the world sourcing spare parts. So, that if a plane went down, or you know, if something broke, they had the spare parts to fix it, right? And so, commanders are not rated only by their unit's ability to fly. They are They are

[19:56] rated, you could even say primarily, on their unit's readiness to fly. So, now, just because the the squadrons are ready to fly, that doesn't mean that they can fly. They can have done everything well, and still not be able to go airborne. And that's because we again, we we might think, well, if the airplanes are ready to fly, then they should fly. Yes, except there's one problem.

[20:32] Carrier-bound aircraft cannot fly on off off of and onto an aircraft carrier that is not moving. It will not work. Okay? They need the ship to be moving as they're coming in to land. Otherwise, it is not possible for them to land. Okay? So, the the the If you can picture the carrier moving, that's taking some of the stress off the aircraft as it lands and grabs the tailhook. Okay? If that aircraft,

[21:07] you know, has to hit that ship um unstationary, in essence, there's not going to be enough leeway for that plane to land on the carrier. It's far, far, far too dangerous. And so, in the case of the USS Ronald Reagan, um although, you know, when we got I mean, we knew we were going on deployment, but when we, you know, the time finally came, you know, we we sailors were loaded on transports, and then the pilots flo- flew their planes from uh Naval Air Station Le- Lemoore in Central California to

[21:45] the uh Naval Air Naval Air Station on Coronado Island off the coast of San Diego. And the idea was they were just going to kind of touch down um at the air station, and then from there fly out to the ship. Well, one problem. Uh the ship was not ready to go. So, one of the nuclear air one of the nuclear reactors on the carrier was out of commission. And doctrine is you don't send a nuclear carrier to sea with only one of its two

[22:22] reactors operational. And the reason is is is I think pretty easy to understand. If you've only got one reactor, and the ship is sail- the ship can sail on one reactor. For sure, it can. But, if it's sailing on one reactor, and it has aircraft aloft, and that reactor for some reason shuts down, and now the ship is dead in the water, the aircraft can't land. All of those pilots would have to ditch in the ocean. Not now, of course, that's incredibly

[22:59] dangerous to the pilots, okay? But, also, all of those 80 million plus dollar aircraft are going to be lost. And so, the aircraft could not fly onto the ship because the ship was ported while it dealt with this issue of one of the reactors being being out of commission. And so, we had a situation where the aircraft were at the Naval Air Station on land. The maintainers for the most part were on the ship. They had to be taken off

[23:34] the ship so they could go and continue to maintain the aircraft. It caused a great deal of chaos and disjunction, um, and and you know, made it harder for everybody to maintain the readiness because all of their equipment for maintaining the aircraft had also been sent to the ship. We didn't want to pull everything off the ship because it's takes a lot of time to load it on and get it set up. And so, it was it was kind of a makeshift operation. Uh, so, you could say, well, how could that possibly be that a that that one of

[24:10] the reactors was out of commission? Well, the captain of the ship had neglected routine maintenance evolutions in order to perform tasks that the Navy felt were, you know, had said were high priority and that way he could get him he would be kind of in the catbird seat in order to get a promotion to Admiral. And indeed, he did get promoted to Admiral and left the ship a few months before we were due to go on deployment. And so, now a new captain took over the ship

[24:47] and all of a sudden he finds all kinds of deficiencies, including deficiencies with the nuclear power plants that necessitated closing, you know, closing one of them down. I shouldn't say it was taken out of commission. It was It was closed down. Um Here's Here's the rub. The senior nuclear officer, a a Navy commander, an 05, he was blamed for the ship's lack of readiness. However, as he tried to explain, he did not have control over the ship's tasking. So,

[25:25] when the captain of the ship says, "We got to be ready to go on such and such a date to do X task." he just had to do it, and it meant several major um maintenance evolutions could not be performed. And so, but you know, so here you have a situation where already the nuclear department is under heavy heavy pressure to keep the ship going even though they can't do some of the maintenance evolutions. And now, it's in essence, because the senior nuclear officer was held responsible, um they're being told, "It's your fault

[26:01] now that we can't go on deployment." And the morale plunged in in the nuclear department. And that made recovery even harder. And the fact of the matter was uh um we in in in 2011, okay? Um the I should say this was 2011. So, when the earthquake and the nuclear reactor meltdown and tsunami hit Japan, um our ship was tasked to provide support. And this put further pressure

[26:37] on the crew to solve these maintenance problems. So, and this is the kind of thing that happens. Things cascade, the pressure keeps increasing, and of course, the more the pressure, the harder it is to get things solved. And so, you know, the lesson here is readiness isn't something you declare when the crisis arrives, right? It has to be established long before the crisis, right? And so, the you know, the captain that took over uh was was saddled with with correcting

[27:12] uh problems that had been created over the prior two two plus years by the former captain. And of course, you know, on on the one hand, the Navy, you know, looks at that and says, "Okay, it wasn't your fault." But on the other hand, he's still under pressure to get it fixed. And so, his career hangs in the balance of doing so. So,

[27:37] >> [cough]

[27:37] >> why wasn't the ship ready? Well, just like any military unit, as I mentioned earlier, units had to report equipment status, maintenance problems were tracked, readiness briefings were supposed to identify deficiencies, and technical specialists were supposed to address the problems. But, there was so much effort uh so much emphasis put on the task the the ship, you know, going out to take care of various tasks, that there was a lot of

[28:14] gun decking that went on. So, gun decking is the uh uh process, if you will, of falsifying official paperwork and logs um and readiness checklists um by claiming that a task uh or a check was done even when it was skipped, or it may have been done, they saw that it failed, but they went ahead and signed off on it anyway, right? And you know, fortunately for the ship, um enough of the problems got fixed that

[28:50] the ship was able to go to sea and the aircraft could fly on and we could get to the coast of Japan to provide humanitarian support um, to the Japanese uh, for example who were trapped and and and you know, didn't have water, didn't have food, didn't have clothing, etc. Right? But here's the thing. Without measurements, okay? Um, the captain of the ship could only be guessing whether the ship was ready to execute a mission.

[29:26] Um, however, or or with measurement, in theory, the captain is able to say, "Well, you know, we're 94% We have 94% capability and we're ready to go." And there's, you know, six deficiencies preventing full readiness, but we can solve those while we're underway. But, if this process is not married with integrity, the whole system falls apart.

[30:08] And that's what happened with uh, with the USS Ronald Reagan and uh, Carrier Air Wing 14 is the whole system fell apart. Now, a- as as the Air Wing Chaplain, there there was no gun decking that went on by um, the it within the squadrons or the Air Wing. The Air Wing was ready to fly, we just couldn't because the ship was not ready to go. Uh, so what we had, if if if you look at how things are supposed to work and how things actually worked, right? So,

[30:44] um readiness does not mean zero problems, right? So, in a large organization like a nuclear aircraft carrier and air wing, there will always be deficiencies, right? The issue is or the goal is to identify them, prioritize them, correct them, and know what could hamper the ability of the ship and crew to fulfill a task and and so be able to take care of the most important ones that keep the ship going

[31:20] while less important ones can be handled while the ship is on task underway. Uh when it came to the ship and air wing readiness, the captain the previous captain of the ship, not not the captain we deployed under, but the previous captain of the ship was sending a mixed message about what was important and it resulted in mission failure, at least temporary mission failure. So, on the one hand,

[31:56] the Navy is saying we have to do these inspections, we have to go through these checklists, we have to make sure readiness is properly certified, and behind the scenes the captain is going, "Get it signed off, get it signed off so we can go, right?" And so you had junior sailors and even in some cases chief petty officers who were gun decking because you know, they're looking and they're saying the captain wants to go and he won't accept the inability to go and and there's no way we can actually fulfill

[32:32] the tasks that that are that are required to sign off these inspections, so we'll just sign them off. Right? And I I know one sailor in particular who was a sign assigned to um uh the the the chaplain's department, the ship's chaplain department, not mine, um who uh was disciplined uh for gun decking, and and he protested vociferously that the screws were put to him, either sign this off or we're going to give you a negative fitness report or a negative eval,

[33:08] um and and the Navy didn't want to hear it, right? Uh I would say unjust for for sure. So, readiness is not just a physical state. I want to reiterate this again. It's it's a mental and spiritual state as well. If we are not going to act with integrity, we don't know whether we have readiness. It may exist, but it may not. Okay? And so, we have to prepare ourselves, our

[33:43] organizations as as leaders of organizations, we need to prepare our people for the mental resilience and and the um and the uh uh ethical firmness that it takes for readiness to actually exist, okay? So, readiness is not perfection. Readiness is knowing what isn't ready, having the ability to fix it, and then exercising accountability through

[34:18] integral verifications. So, why is the military so disciplined about readiness? And it's because going back to one of my original points. The military understands timing. You can't You can postpone maintenance uh when you're, you know, sitting in the motor pool, or you're at a base, or you're preparing for an exercise, but you cannot necessarily postpone it when the unit is under attack, when aircraft are needed for a mission and lives are

[34:53] on the line, when the convoy is moving, when the operation is already underway. And so, the military is always asking "What must be ready before we need it?" And that is the essence of readiness. Okay, so let's take uh let's take a quick sponsor break, and we'll look at some business lessons. When life brings unexpected changes, managing inherited property shouldn't add to your stress. Magnum Properties specializes in probate

[35:28] and trust real estate management. We handle the complexities while you focus on what matters most. From property maintenance to tenant relations, from legal compliance to maximizing value, we're your trusted partner through every step. Magnum Properties Inc., turning property challenges into peace of mind. Call us today at 213-264-4396, or visit magnumprops.com. Okay. By the way, if you see that aircraft that comes up just before I

[36:04] come up, that is one of the aircraft from my air wing. That's a command and control aircraft. So, uh lessons that we can draw from military readiness. First of all, don't confuse ownership with capability. So, a company may own uh excellent technology. It may have valuable equipment, it can have tremendous intellectual property, it can have a strong customer list, it can have really great employees, but that doesn't say anything about whether they're capable

[36:40] of performing, and especially capable of performing under a stressful situation. So, a business needs to ask, you know, who can replace our most important employee? How quickly can we recover from a system failure? Um, can we operate if our largest supplier disappears? And how much cash is actually available for an unexpected opportunity or catastrophe, right? All of these are part of readiness, okay?

[37:17] So, having resources does not equate to readiness or capabilities. It only means the raw material is there, execution is still required. So, examining your own business, what resources do you have? That's step number one. If you don't have the resources, okay, you're not going to be ready. But, are those resources trained and deployed in such a way that they can execute on the mission of your business? So, that's number one. Number two,

[37:52] preventive maintenance is strategic, okay? So, it's obvious if you have a business that that has vehicles and equipment and buildings, all of those all of those need to be maintained, right? If you have a delivery business, if if you're, you know, um, UPS or FedEx, if your trucks can't hit the road, if your planes can't fly, nothing's getting delivered. Okay, that that that that's pretty obvious, okay? But, less obvious

[38:27] as part of readiness is customer relationships, employee skills, leadership pipelines, financial reserves, and business processes. Right? All of these could mean, again, despite having all of your, you know, equipment, hardware, whatever, that your business is not ready to operate. Okay? So, I'll take a real short example from my own career. Uh I'm sort of kind of

[39:02] late spring 2024, I had recently taken over a big estate and I got run over by a car.

[39:14] >> [laughter]

[39:14] >> And I could not drive. And yet I had to be down at the office of a business this estate owned in order to see what was going on, meet with the people,

[39:27] >> [snorts]

[39:27] >> and

[39:29] >> [laughter]

[39:30] >> I didn't know what to do. And so, I, you know, talked to a friend of mine and he said, "I know a guy who can, you know, drive you around." Like and and I cuz I couldn't afford to be taking, you know, Ubers or or um uh Waymos all the time. It would have eaten up all the money I was making on the assignment, right? So, you know, I didn't have um a backup in place uh for for myself in this case when my mobility was restricted. Right? And so,

[40:06] uh this this this became uh you know, problematic. And I And I had to deal with it. I was I did not have proper readiness in my own business. So, um the question we should businesses should be asking themselves or business leaders should be asking themselves is, what are we neglecting because it isn't broken? Okay? Where are there vulnerabilities in our business to which we need to pay attention? Okay, number that was number two. Number three, um, inspect readiness rather than assuming it, right? The the Navy, all

[40:44] the branches of military, as I as I detailed earlier, have extensive procedures for establishing whether readiness actually exist. And as long as they're applied with integrity, the commanding officer knows the state of readiness of his unit. Okay? So, readiness is measured and deficiencies are reported and leaders are held accountable, right? Just like those squadron commanding officers, the ones with the best readiness are the one with the best

[41:19] readiness, he was the one who was given the highest ranking among all the squadron commanders. By the way, that's important because when they go up for promotion, being one of seven is a lot better than being, say, three or four of seven. Okay? Big, big difference, okay? In terms of your promotability, right? So, from a business application from the standpoint of a business, right? Create metrics for critical functions. So,

[41:55] if if you have if if your business is reliant on computers, what is the percentage uptime of those computers? What is the percentage functionality of critical aspects of of what's done on the the okay? If if you are if you are manufacturing products, what is the uptime? What is the percentage uptime of your production lines, okay? Those are the kind of metrics that you can create, even if you have a service business, okay? So,

[42:30] let's say you're a law firm, right? So, uh what percentage of the time are clients' calls or requests for information being answered within whatever you think is an acceptable metric? Uh 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, right? Um that is that is a readiness metric because it's telling you whether you are able to respond to your clients' needs, okay? So, test disaster recovery. What What would happen in your office or your business

[43:06] if you lost power? How quickly after the power comes back on are you going to be able to be, you know, get back up to speed and and ready to go, right? Uh what's going to happen with to your computers if the power goes off? Are they just going to, you know, shut down and that's it? Okay, and then what is it going to take to reboot those systems? All of that could be, uh practiced, if you will, on on a non-crucial day. Maybe you just bring in everybody on a Saturday or a Sunday to to test it out, okay? To test out uh disaster recovery,

[43:41] okay? And and so, conduct exercises, okay? What what will happen if, let's say, the CEO um gets gets injured? Now, he's in the hospital, he's unable to direct activities. What's going to happen? You know, you could practice that. The CEO could could, you know, set up a system where he he he tells the COO, "Look, you know, next week on Thursday you're going to get a message that I've been injured and I'm in the hospital and you're going to have to take over and let's just let's just see

[44:18] how you do, okay? You know, we're not we won't tell people what's going on or maybe you will or whatever, but let's just test this out, right? There are again, there are ways to conduct in this case it would be a succession exercise, right? Review key customer relationships. Okay? Where will where might they be impacted by a lack of readiness? Do you have a particular client who is extremely reliant on your ability on your company's ability to provide goods or services? What's going to happen with

[44:53] that client if you can't? Where is the backup there? Okay? And if you can't supply it, what is that going to mean in terms of maintaining that client? Okay? So, the question isn't are we prepared? Okay? The question is what evidence tells us we're prepared. Okay? And that's what's important. So, create standards and test those standards. Okay. Next, number four. Make maintenance or make readiness

[45:28] everybody's responsibility, right? So, in the military as I mentioned earlier, operators notice, maintainers diagnose and repair, but in the end the commander owns readiness. So, a business equivalent could be an employee identifies a problem, a specialist, maybe a technical specialist, let's say if it's a if it's a computer problem, they solve the problem or they work with the employee to solve the problem, but the department manager, the department head, the supervisor,

[46:03] actually owns the outcome, owns whether his department is ready to perform, right? So, that that will alleviate the danger of, "Hey, it's not my department. I'm not responsible there." If if it's if it's defined that way, then then everybody knows. And if you build a culture where everybody is on the lookout for where readiness, what could cause readiness to fail, and you encourage people to not only observe these things, but take steps to

[46:40] see that they're addressed, and then follow up by getting them addressed, you'll you're going to have you're going to build very solid readiness, okay? And then finally, the fifth lesson. So, the cost of readiness must be compared with the cost of failure, okay? So, in the military, the cost of our squadron a squadron not being able to fly could be that it cannot supply

[47:16] the close grounds the close ground support that a unit needs, and so they're more vulnerable to attack, and more Marines get you know, God forbid, killed or wounded, okay? It could be that uh you know, someone falls off the ship, and we don't have a helicopter that can launch to rescue that person. That's how dire it can be in the military. So, but the reality is is keeping those squadrons able to fly, it takes time and money, and training to do that. So,

[47:54] similarly in a business, training takes people away from production, systems upgrades cost money, equipment inspections consume resources, um and prevent preventative work doesn't always produce revenue or at least immediate revenue. Sometimes it's it's purely uh you know a a a a a revenue or it's a it's a it's a cost not a revenue gain, right? But, what will failure cost you? Will you lose a customer or customers? Will you

[48:30] lose productivity? Will you have higher expenses because problems have to be dealt with on an emergency basis? Will you miss opportunities? Maybe to expand, to to get a great client that you're you're just not able to because you're not able to support the client, you end up not getting that client or customer. And you could suffer reputational damage, which can have a long-term negative impact not just on the income to the business, but just on the overall

[49:05] value of the company. So, in a business calculation, it's not it the the the relevant question is not what will this cost. It will it is what will it cost if we don't do it. Okay? What is the trade-off between um the cost of maintenance and the cost or the cost of readiness and the cost of failure. So, the military's obsession, it's not it's not with maintenance and that's why I

[49:40] corrected myself a moment ago. It's it's with readiness. Okay? Maintenance is a form of of readiness or it's a part of readiness, I should say, but it's not the whole picture, right? So, the military knows you cannot predict when you'll when you'll be needed, or when a unit will be needed. You cannot eliminate every potential failure, and you cannot prepare for everything at the last minute. And so, readiness preparation has to be done continuously.

[50:15] And that really is the business lesson. So, uh, you don't become ready when opportunity arrives, or the crisis begins. You become ready beforehand, okay? So, the military maintains equipment today, so that it will be ready for tomorrow's mission, right? And a business should maintain its people, systems, finances, relationships, and capabilities for the same reason. So, resil- res- uh, relentless resilience wins wars, and

[50:53] it can also win at business, too. So, in your business, what are the key areas that need to be maintained in order to have readiness? So, if you look right down below you, you'll see links to social media. Drop a comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, and I'm I'm always happy to, uh, reply to social media posts. So, uh, real quickly, schedule of shows. Monday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, Trusts and Estates Weekly. Tuesdays,

[51:28] like today, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific, Business Lessons from the Military. Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m. Pacific, People Making Money. And every other Thursday at 5:00 p.m. Pacific, join me at Jigger's Place for a cocktail and a schmooze. We'll talk about all kinds of non-business-related subjects, like books, movies, relationships, ideas, okay? And if um if if you currently are not a subscriber to the show, so please follow Business Lessons from the Military on Apple

[52:03] Podcasts or Spotify, so you'll automatically receive new episodes. And let me know which topics you like and would like to see more of in future episodes by posting a comment on those platforms, as well. 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're my bell. Courage at all times, my friends.