0:03 foreign 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 an hour in for mountain and Central and our purpose for this half hour or so is to talk about military Doctrine military history the
0:38 behavior if you will the leadership of of great Military Officers and and um and non-commissioned officers what the lessons we can learn from them that we can apply to our own businesses so for the last couple of weeks we've been talking about the nature of business based on Doc the Marine Marine Corps War fighting Doctrine which trans is being translated from the nature of warfare so I I feel compelled to mention this at
1:14 least briefly each each week I don't look at businesses War I know there are some who do there's a famous uh well famous a relatively well-known book that um uh basically took the principles of the Art of War and translated them into business um and I I think it's called like the war of business or something like this um business is is not war hopefully it's it's not War I think for those who look at it that way um they are acting um shall we say overzealously in the
1:49 pursuit of their business having said that much about the way um military organizations work and the way uh Wars are fought um are are are similar and can be translated into how the business World works and so that's that is our mission here each each Tuesday so let's let's continue on with our discussion of uh the nature of business and wait a minute uh I've got a little a little problem here
2:25 there we go okay so let's let's cancel that and [Laughter] you you would think after all this time I I would be uh on top of these things but that's okay okay so here we go and slideshow here we go away from the start okay so this this is uh see has this nice sort of military look to it right with the the gray background with the with the dark gray spots um oops uh what are we doing here there we go oh okay so
3:00 everything we do in the way to wow shows is based on the three pillars of attainment we're operating prime or we're discussing Concepts primarily here in the pursuit Spiller in the finances section but as I mentioned each week many of these Concepts will apply to relationships to ourself especially our mindset and our identity so uh last week I talked about friction and uncertainty how those what those two are and and how they uh work together if you will and uh
3:36 if you would like to view that episode please go to our YouTube channel um youtube.com I think it's slash at sign the way to Wild show and and you can look at that um that show and then actually two weeks ago I did the uh the the session on fluidity and disorder um I had made a mistake as to where we we're in the different series of of uh issues we were talking about um so but you can I would actually recommend if you haven't seen the first two shows go back uh do last week's
4:12 first and then go back two weeks and do this the second one and that way you'll be actually learning about them in order so this week we're going to talk about complexity and the human Dimension and I I think in many ways these may be perhaps the most similar in terms of the nature of business between the military and the you know the private sector if you will um and by the way when I say private sector I don't mean uh just just the
4:49 private for-profit sector I I include non-profits Academia I think any any organization these two um ideas uh apply um and and and I think you'll see why pretty quickly so first of all let's let's talk about complexity so while ideally when an army is seeking to achieve uh
5:25 let's let's say as an army it's looking to achieve a strategic objective so let's let's look at World War II that's that's probably that's that's been perhaps the last war where we had a clear strategic uh object objective right it was um unconditional surrender by the Axis powers so we'll talk about um the uh the war um in in Germany right so there were actually after D-Day
6:00 um June uh sixth I believe it was 1944. So eventually fairly soon after within a few weeks there were several armies all focused on moving through um the lowlands Holland Etc and into liberating France and then on into Germany from various different directions and the Strategic goal or the Strategic objective was to uh get to Berlin and or to sort of connect up with
6:35 the Soviet armies that were coming from the East okay and and and and the idea was um by the time that the armies had had sort of met up Germany would have no choice but but to surrender unconditionally um they they wouldn't be able to you know negotiate any kind of settlement for example for Hitler to stay in power or anything like that okay so that was their strategic uh objective now here's here's the thing ideally
7:11 every single soldier in every single unit from Rifle Team to Army group would be focused on that sole objective right and and if and if if that were the case perhaps it would it could be met with um you know a lot more efficiently and quickly the situation though is is is is each well you have the Supreme Allied
7:46 Commander that was uh Dwight Eisenhower you had his key um deputies um I'm trying to remember um his uh there was uh um uh oh gosh I can't remember their names now anyway there was one in charge of land forces there was one in charge of Air Forces okay and so at the very top you had essentially three or four people who were overseeing sort of grand strategy and then below him you had Army group commanders which that included uh Omar Bradley
8:21 um and uh was there another there was another Army group Commander I don't remember who that was may have been um Mark uh shoot I can't think of his last name okay so then underneath underneath Omar Bradley and his staff you had Army commanders that included um Bernard Montgomery um Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery who was uh the Britain's um top uh field commander in World War II and you had General George Patton uh
8:56 who was arguably um the best field commander that the Americans had in the European uh theater of war okay and then they had their staffs and then below the armies you had um you had the court commanders and then you had the division commanders and then you had the regimental commanders and The Medallion commanders and the company commanders and then you had rifle team leaders or you had platoon leaders and rifle team leaders so you had this whole chain of command in theory each leader in that chain of command was on board
9:32 with the same Strategic Mission so when so when at the Army level they planned operations they were planning them with that mission that objective in mind right and then when you get down to the Tactical level the company and platoon and and Below levels they were planning their tactics in line with the uh strategic and operational objectives that were set by higher echelons right and and and I think in general people believe that that in the
10:08 military that's how it works because you know you issue an order and and and people follow it in reality that's not really how it works so let's start from the other direction okay and from the other direction if you start with just the the you know sort of grunt infantry man and artillery man and such um while they certainly want to do their jobs in most cases what they also want to do is stay alive and so while they may have a particular
10:43 tactical objective taking you know this particular Hill or or flanking you know this enemy position or something like that they're probably going to be at least as interested in how do I meet that objective without getting killed as they are with just meeting that objective okay and the amount of risk that they're willing to take will differ depending on who they are now some some units were were willing to
11:19 take big risks so if you've ever heard about the nisei this these were American combat units in Europe um filled by Japanese Americans and you know without getting into the whole story as as many of you may know Japanese Americans in World War II were interned in what amounted to you know concentration camps although they they weren't brutalized but they were certainly taken out of their homes and put in these camps in California and other places so some of them ended up volunteering to fight in the American Military right and
11:55 said can you imagine in some way um and in fact I have a friend of mine whose uh Uncle I believe was in the nisei so these these Japanese American soldiers were incredibly Brave I don't want to say they were Reckless because they don't think they were um but in many cases they took risks that really just kind of blew the minds of of you know other soldiers that wouldn't you know other American soldiers that would encounter them in combat they were they were much more aggressive they
12:30 in general I'm not saying they got this from from General Patton but in General Patton's view you're better off just like ramming ahead and pushing and taking it to the enemy that's the shortest way to to end the battle and and meet your objective other commanders other um soldiers were more reticent about how they approached taking a particular objective and they were more concerned about casualties you know people people men getting killed Etc so so that
13:05 because people are individuals they aren't necessarily attacking an objective exactly the way higher echelons are imagining it and that brings complexity to the battlefield okay and you're going to see in a minute how this plays directly or how human the human Dimension you see it plays directly into this the human Dimension has other facets to it that we're going to talk about but indeed the the
13:41 battlefield whether it's a land-based battlefield or whether it's an ocean for navies or the skies for for aircraft they are much more complex than we think they are right and and it doesn't have just to do with with how come how um uh how willing a particular unit or a particular person is willing to pursue the fight it it has to do with just understanding well we're supposed to you know do this well people don't necessarily understand
14:16 things in the same way and so that can make things very complex now keep in mind I'm just talking about one side on the other side you have the same thing happening so you've got two complex organizations or at least two you may have more than two depending on on what the what the factors are in the battlefield and they they have you know they may have sort of um uh what you might call complementary objectives um you know the Americans want to take
14:51 Monte Casino in Italy the Italians and Germans don't want to let them okay that's that's a direct clash in in objectives but it may not be that direct so the the the enemy's objective may be different enough from from you know the America's objective that they're not coming in in direct conflict it's almost like they're Lansing blows or they're trying to accomplish things that that you know um okay so for example in the Battle of the Bulge which it the Germans
15:28 objectives was not to stop the Americans the Germans objectives was to actually the German objective was to move through the American lines and and create um an outlet getting to the coast to separate the two armies and and the Americans object or the allied's objectives was to keep pushing toward you know meeting up with the Russians so they weren't they were they were objectives that were opposed but they weren't directly opposed okay that that adds complexity because we you know as if we're attacking a
16:05 particular uh um location okay and we're thinking well you know the enemy what they're what they want to do is they want to stop our attack the enemy may not want to stop our attack they may not they maybe couldn't care less okay so go ahead and attack we're just gonna go over here and and you're gonna in essence kind of run right by us and what do we care because we have this objective over here okay so the idea is that the whole Battlefield is very complex because oftentimes we're making assumptions about the uh well we have
16:40 you know people making decisions on our site and on the other side we're making assumptions about what they want to accomplish and those assumptions may or may not be correct all of this makes the battlefield very very difficult to operate in and and it's why it necessitates um as we were talking about think we have to be fluid in how we deal with things there's uncertainty right all see how these things start working together there's disorder Okay so I just want to check my time here okay good so so the complexity of the
17:16 battlefield is the same it's the same concept in business okay so in any organization whether it's a for-profit business a non-profit business and I know we don't think of non-profits as a business per se but a non-profit organization so we may have our objective uh our main strategic objective whatever that is but our our organization is made up of people and those people may have objectives that don't necessarily align
17:53 with ours right and and we sometimes call this you know corporate politics right so the the sort of nature of of people is well okay I'm you know I I the company wants to meet its objective um how many people if if the if meeting the objective of the Strategic objective of the company entailed me not working there anymore how many people are going to go hey um you know what the best way I can help you meet the objective is by you know you laying me off or by me quitting how many people are going to do
18:28 that very few if any right there because they're all they have their own interests as well and and that's look that's understandable right so someone who might be best to leave an organization right they're not gonna say ah best way best thing for me to do is leave they're going to think okay how can I either make myself look important or maybe you know maybe more productively How can I figure out a way to be productive to help get toward the company's objective even though what I've been told to do
19:04 isn't really being useful at all right so so you have those kinds of things that go on in um business so it's not that people are you know more concerned about you know not getting killed the way they would in a war but they are concerned about not losing their job right or they're you know losing their livelihood which is is you know more and more probably directly online right and and um so you know and and in general the higher up you go on the hierarchy the
19:39 more people in business are concerned about maintaining their position right so that in some ways that seems the opposite of the military where the lower down the chain of command you are the more likely you are to face you know actual existential issues like like getting shot right but keep in mind that um even in an army the higher up you go the more incentive there is to want to keep that position and so if if you're not fit for command very few commanders
20:14 are going to say wow I've reached the level where it's beyond my ability to to be effective in meeting the Strategic objective so I'm gonna I'm gonna call my commander and say you know hey um you know General Eisenhower uh you know this is uh I don't know Omar Bradley uh clearly I am not qualified to be you know a an army group Commander you need to get rid of me or demote me right it's not going to happen I'm not I'm not saying by the way that Omar Bradley wasn't qualified but but you have it's it's human nature we're most of us are not going to demote
20:49 ourselves okay at least not on purpose we may do something that highlights our own lack of usefulness and so in the end we sort of shoot ourselves in the foot so to speak um but we're we're probably not going to volunteer to drop out all of that creates complexity as part of the nature of business so as clear as we can be about our objectives and and as clear as we attempt to be in in not only communicating those objectives to other people in the organization but putting in systems like
21:25 compensation systems to align them with our objective they're still individuals and they're they're going to create a complex a complexity in our company that's that that's got to be dealt with and then once you add in what our competitors are doing the complexity that they're dealing with and the assumptions that we may be making about what they're trying to achieve so then this is why business can be very unpredictable right so um having said that one of the ways we
22:01 try and reduce the complexity is we we seek to get intelligence right so in uh in the battlefield we seek to get intelligence about what the enemy is trying to accomplish and and so for example when you look at the Battle of Midway in World War II we we knew that the Japanese were going to be attacking Midway before the attack began and that made a huge difference in what the American what the U.S Navy did in defending Midway how they how they
22:37 worked that plan also the Japanese didn't know that we knew they were going to be attacking right so they thought they were surprising us and we weren't surprised at all we knew what they were going to do and and it was you know other factors of course played into it but in the end this is what allowed the U.S Navy to Prevail in the Battle of Midway so we can reduce complexity with intelligence which is um we can reduce right complexity by getting intelligence of course we have
23:13 to be careful sometimes we'll get intelligence that's turned out to be false right there her the other side is purposely putting out information to mislead us right and there and and and this is what we did um in the European theater um in the Normandy invasion uh General Patton didn't take place I mean didn't take part and and the reason was the Allies had built up this whole big fake Army organization around General Patton and and put out information leaked out information about it to the Germans and
23:49 the Germans were convinced that because um they had gotten what they thought was Intelligence about uh General Patton and his army attacking at the pot of Calais they held forces back from Normandy so when the attack came at Normandy among others Hitler was so convinced that this was a fake attack he didn't release additional resources additional Panzer divisions to help defend at Normandy right so that's a classic example of using essentially you know fake intelligence to mislead the enemy so
24:24 that you know the the Allies could more easily meet their strategic objective right so the same thing happens in business we try and get intelligence about our competitors right now we may be able to get Bonafide intelligence sense but sometimes our competitors may do something some things to purposely mislead Us in terms of what they're doing now maybe not in the same way that it happens in the battlefield um and and sometimes by the way we may think a company is very clear in its objectives but they're not and and they're sending out mixed signals and so
25:02 um and so you know we're thinking you know what about this is really true because they must know what they're doing you know they're our competitors of course they know what they're doing right when in reality they may not really know what they're doing and and and the intelligence we're getting is is accurate that they're confused but because of the assumptions we have about them we're thinking they're feeding us false intelligence or false information so you can see how while intelligence can reduce complexity it can it can increase it back up depending on how
25:37 it's being used okay so again a very important part of a business is recognizing the complexity and embedded in that then is the human dimension and and that's why I know you didn't get it Siri can you hear Siri talking in the background um you know when you look at uh the history of of successful business manner business people you'll especially going back say even 100 a hundred years ago or
26:12 more many of them were not college educated or anything like that but they had a certain what we might call native intelligence that allowed them to be successful and what it really was I think is they understood Human Nature so they grasped the human dimension in a very profound way and because of that they were able to navigate the complexities of the business environment successfully
26:47 okay so the fact of the matter is we as and and I think this is one of the areas where a businesses May are struggling somewhat these days is you know we look at a business and we say look you know this is what the business is about it's about maximizing shareholder value it's about becoming the best uh sneaker manufacturer in the world or whatever that is okay but within that again it's a a business is a whole group of people
27:23 and each person brings their sense of morality they bring their mental Outlook to the business they bring their physical stamina to to the business so as you can imagine these things can affect an army quite significantly so if your army is not trained to be physically resilient it's going to be much much less uh successful on the battlefield so to a certain extent the same is true in
27:58 business if if our people are not physically fit for the rigors of of business so we're not going to have a resilient organization even more so business today requires a lot of thinking focus and those are very exhausting activities and people have different abilities to focus to be mentally resilient and so to the extent that where we either are hiring people that are emotionally resilient and bring
28:35 mental focus or not that will have a profound impact on our business and how successful we are in meeting our strategic objectives finally people bring different moral systems and you see this being played out in the battleground of business today perhaps more so than I don't know I think any time in in my lifetime where you see groups within companies basically fighting out fighting issues based on their their values as opposed
29:12 to any other thing right so um you may have seen what happened with the Walt Disney Company in Florida right so the Walt Disney Company came out with a particular political position the uh governor and legislators most legislators in Florida disagree with it and and it became a big battle that has little to do with entertaining you know producing family entertainment right presumably the the Walt Disney Company is interested in producing family entertainment or at least entertainment
29:47 you know kind of writ large right but because of the moral values of the people of some of the people within the company that because that human Dimension became a factor in the Walt Disney Company in the way the Walt Disney Company pursued its business and in fact it it ended up leading ended up leading to the CEO for Walt Disney Bob chapek losing his job because he didn't manage didn't lead that situation uh well at least from the perspective of the board of directors
30:23 right and you see it from the other side first um Chick-fil-A right Chick-fil-A they close their restaurants on Sunday because the the the um owners of Chick-fil-A are as I understand it religious Christians and they feel that people should not work on Sunday well if they were open on Sundays people would clearly come and buy more chicken sandwiches and such right so their their morals are impacting the Strategic Mission for that business which is to be profitable presumably to
31:00 make money so but they're saying okay we want to make money but we want to make money only up to the point where we're not offending our moral values right now in a uh in a uh closely held or a privately owned business like Chick-fil-A those kind of um those kind of values can be expressed um and and and people who work for the company either go along with it or or they don't um in a company like the Walt Disney Company which is publicly traded and has
31:37 I don't know thousands tens of thousands of of stockholders so while some of the stockholders may agree with the the um moral position being taken by the group of employees that objected to what was going on in Florida others may not and so now this human Dimension is causing a dynamic within the business that again it doesn't have anything to do necessarily with the what would assumably what we presume would be the main strategic uh purpose for the business which is to
32:13 be the Premier Entertainment Company in the world indeed the Walt Disney Company is the largest entertainment company in the world okay so some people would look at it and say getting involved with this Florida thing is is taking away from that and others are saying no we have to do this because we have a responsibility to be a good corporate citizen Etc et cetera et cetera so that human Dimension comes into play and it creates additional complexity within the business environment so the better we can be in understanding
32:49 human nature and Understanding Psychology the better we can be in building our businesses right so I have a long-standing friend uh in the real estate business he actually his degree from college was in Psychology started out as a probation officer and he founded somewhat unsatisfying being a probation officer and he eventually got into the real estate business and his knowledge of psychology and the way people think and behave has helped him a great deal in building a very we build a
33:27 very successful real estate company that he later sold and that and now he continues to do real estate transactions and and and his understanding of Human Nature has been I would argue critical to his success and if you look at very successful people oftentimes what you will see is they understand how human beings think and operate and and that becomes a big part of their ability to lead of of being able to get people United behind a
34:04 common Vision that then you know everybody can can in general move toward as opposed to having this one spinning off here and this one's spinning off here Etc okay I think I'm I'm actually a little bit over time but I I think this is a fascinating subject and I invite you to think about these issues as they relate to to your business or to the company for which you're working how how does complexity and the human Dimension play into what's going on there we tend to sort of you know it's it's corporate politics corporate politics is real it's
34:40 important and it can be a force driving the business forward or it can be a force that that's you know essentially makes the company completely ineffective okay how we manage human nature or the human Dimension within the complex business environment will largely determine the success of the business so thank you very much for joining me uh today I want to say this morning because this morning here on the West Coast but I know it's already afternoon on the East Coast so thank you very much for
35:16 joining me next week we're going to continue on with the nature of business I think we've got one or two more uh sessions on that and then we'll move on to the next subject um again I just want to mention all of our shows are available on our YouTube channel the way to wow show on YouTube so please do check that out I think you will find a lot there uh to help you a lot of food for thought there that will help you move your business and your career forward we're and the way to wow Show Business lessons from the military is here every Tuesday 10 30 a.m Pacific 1 30 p.m
35:53 um Eastern tomorrow please join me for the way to wow people making money uh this is our show on Career Development we talk about a career in financial development I should say and we talk about various subjects for improving your career prospects improving your your finances your Investments um making more money all the all the issues dealing with that that is at 12 30 p.m Pacific 3 30 p.m eastern time again an hour in for Central and
36:28 mountain time so thanks again for joining me hopefully I will see you tomorrow um you can always go to our my Eventbrite page um just look for the way to wow show on Eventbrite you can join me live if you like or you can always see me uh streaming on YouTube LinkedIn Facebook and Twitter so have a great rest of the day look forward to seeing you tomorrow and next week and signing off Marie darling you are my bell all the best folks