0:15 foreign hello and welcome to business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and we are here every Tuesday at 11 A.M Pacific Time 2 p.m eastern time with an hour in for Central and mountain and we discuss military Doctrine military history great leadership ideas from the military and apply them to our business lives so that we can run our businesses more effectively we can lead our teams better and all around gain
0:51 greater success in our professional lives so we um we spent a half an hour together each week and um we've been for um the last few months discussing different aspects of Marine Corps War fighting Doctrine and I if for those of you who are new to the show I think you will find it's quite interesting how warfighting Doctrine which is an existential function uh and business which is not nonetheless share
1:27 a lot of common ideas and we can learn a lot by what's been done um in in the military realm to look at how do we how do we create effect effective plans effective activities effective forces to gain our objectives so we're going to jump right into this and um and because this is a you know military um uh program
2:03 um you know we we have to have a a PowerPoint presentation um I I think the rule is if you do a presentation in the military without a PowerPoint you get a bad conduct discharge um you know just just joking uh but I I don't think I ever went to a presentation in the military without some kind of PowerPoint unless it was one that I was doing and I didn't do a PowerPoint specifically to uh amuse the people that I was briefing so here we are the way to wow shows and uh yes those of you you should be familiar with this and this this is the basis for all
2:40 the way way to wow shows the three pillars of attainment we're operating down here in the Pursuits realm and in the finances I mean the Pursuits pillar the finances realm and um but other other parts of the three pillars come into play now in previous uh episodes we've covered other other topics under the conduct of War applied to business so we've talked about maneuver Warfare orienting on the enemy philosophy of command shaping the action decision making Mission tactics last week we
3:15 talked about commanders in 10. so if you missed any of those episodes please go to our YouTube channel it's at youtube.com forward slash at the way to wow and you can see all the past episodes both of of this this part of of business lessons from the military the conduct of War applied to business but previous um episodes not only of this show but of my other shows I'll mention what those are toward the end so today we're going to talk about an idea called the main
3:51 effort and I think that this is what many of us in business really struggle with okay so we're running a business and we've got administrative duties we've got sales we've got marketing we've got um we've got to put together products if if we're selling you know actual things but even if we're selling services so we have to put together service packages we have to do client relations um we may have to do a certain amount of fundraising if we're expanding there's so many different aspects of our
4:30 business and it may be tempting to think well the main effort of the business is to make money well that may be the purpose of the business the broader purpose but the main effort of the business is that thing that the business does that drives everything else okay it's it's really tied to the mission of the business so I talk about the idea of purpose and Mission in the
5:07 context of individuals and I'm going to go back um just for a moment to the three pillars of a change okay so in talking about ourselves and especially our identities there's really two parts to our identity there's our purpose and there is our mission our purpose is who we are so for example among the aspects of my purpose is father uh businessman athlete um raconteur which is a Storyteller
5:44 um and if if you you probably can't read this but up here you have you if you if you could re-french you would see that's my purpose it's all those parts of who I am and then there's Mission what I want to accomplish okay now sometimes purpose and Mission get conflated but uh and and there's no ma some people say well my purpose is to do um the problem is is my my mission is to be sounds funny so my purpose is to be a
6:21 particular kind of person okay my mission is to accomplish an impact on the world or on my family or on on my community whatever that is okay the scope of your mission is is is the scope of mission is for each one of us to decide now for a business we have the same two questions of identity to develop okay what purpose and Mission so the purpose
6:56 of the of the business may be to be the most um innovative um I'm trying to think of okay so I I don't know if this is the case but let's take Tesla okay Tesla I I think is to be the most Innovative car company well actually they don't consider themselves a car company right the most Innovative technology company working in transportation in the world I think that would be a fair statement of their purpose they're right that part of their identity who they are their mission is
7:35 to develop Transportation um options that reduce the impact of moving people and goods around the world okay now again I'm not saying that these are what they are but I could imagine that if they were to look at their identity in terms of purpose and Mission okay that those would be the you know those would be something they would come up with okay so now let's go back to main effort okay so in talking about our main effort
8:11 what we're looking to figure out is what is the most important thing the business does supporting its identity and its mission okay so it's tempting to say well you know sales is the main effort because without sales there won't be any money and and without any money we can't uh you know we we can't pay our our people there we don't make any kind of profit we can't pay our expenses so
8:46 without the money coming in um you know we're nothing so sales has got to be our main effort okay um so let me ask you this if you have nothing to sell how can sales be your main effort oh okay well product is manufacturing is the main effort okay maybe that's true okay if you're selling the same thing all the time and not developing any new products what is your main effort I mean what what is there you know where what kind
9:21 of the products are not going to sell if they if they're like take the clothing business for example right they have fashion trends come and go and whatever right so manufacturing may not be the main effort maybe the development of products or Services if you're a service business that's that that uh satisfy customer demand um maybe that is the main effort um I I don't know it depends on what your business is now if you're you know Morton's salt okay and I I know Morton
9:57 salt I assume Morton salt is not a standalone business anymore but with Morton's salt probably product development is isn't the main effort because kind of salt is salt now I know today there's there's sea salt and there's there's kosher salt and there's this salt and that's all no okay yes yes I mean you can develop a million different kinds of salt but but the reality is is product variation is not really product development I would argue okay so maybe for Morton salt the main effort is sales because
10:33 um you don't you know salt kind of salt is salt or or not I I don't know or maybe marketing is the main effort because keeping Mortons as a salt manufacturer uppermost in people's minds when they go into the grocery store maybe that's the most important thing for Success okay um and by the way the main effort may change so in a startup the main effort may be obtaining sufficient Capital to get the business up and running and and give it
11:10 some Runway so it can you know move on to a different main effort okay so what is the main effort then it is the thing the business has to do that is most critical to its success okay it's most critical to its success now in one way or another it's probably going to relate to the identity of the business okay
11:46 um it's it's somehow gonna be integrated into what the business is and what its mission is okay so in a startup you know let's let's let's go back to the Tesla example when Tesla was a startup and its mission was to um develop um the most ecologically uh friendly Transportation means um you know in in in the world okay so in the beginning the main effort was was was either coming up with its first
12:24 Transportation vehicle whatever the initial Tesla car was that may have been its main effort but its main effort also might have been finding the startup Capital so that there was the financial weight behind meeting its Mission I I don't know uh which is which I don't know why this person keeps calling um but in any event oh shoot it took me out of uh okay here we go um but um in in any event we need to
13:01 identify what is the most crucial thing we need to be doing we need to be focused on in order to achieve the success of our business okay and and this comes directly out of War fighting Doctrine so when you are in a battle or what really when you're planning a battle um the key thing is to figure out where do we need to be most focused in order to achieve our objective and that
13:38 happens no matter where the unit is whether it's the the smallest unit the the rifle team or the squad or whether it's the the Army um each has its main effort and then all of the other efforts become supporting efforts to the main effort so whatever they're doing the question becomes if I do this thing is it going to support or detract from the main effort
14:14 okay so let's go back to our business example of of Tesla if um one of the key things to Tesla's are you know batteries okay so creating um ever more efficient batteries is probably not the main effort for Tesla however it is part of what Tesla has to do in order to be successful and it supports the main effort okay so if the main effort is to
14:49 build the most ecologically um the most ecological Transportation means in the world one way to do that is to build electric vehicles and essential to electric vehicles are batteries okay and so the creation of more efficient batteries is a supporting effort it's not the main effort it's a supporting effort okay the main effort it's What's called the supported effort
15:26 all other efforts are supporting efforts or they should be supporting efforts because if they're not supporting efforts what they're doing is they're pulling the organization's ability to meet the main effort away from meeting that main effort okay and the business is working at conflict and this happens often Okay so um when you have businesses that are highly leveraged they have a lot of debt right and and and and therefore it the
16:02 businesses need a lot of money to uh support that debt to make the the debt payments and also to retire the debt to pay off the debt okay so oftentimes what happens to businesses is they get very focused on maximizing cash flow so they can pay off that debt now the problem with that is paying off debt is rarely if ever the main effort for a business that's going to make it successful what makes a business successful is supplying something that
16:39 people want and or need and therefore will pay money for paying off debt is not anything that any client or customer needs I mean unless it's paying off their debt and you're a you know you're a debt counseling company or something like that okay so do you see that by um by having a business that okay let I don't as far as I know Tesla is not um over leveraged but let's just say Tesla was highly highly over leveraged okay and so at the same time it needs to be developing uh more efficient batteries
17:14 at the same time it needs to be developing new types of Transportation products it also needs to be paying off this huge debt load do you see that paying off the huge debt load okay is taking away from these other initiatives and while you you could say well paying off the debt load is crucial for the company to survive that's true but it ha it doesn't it doesn't do anything for the main effort okay because the main effort is to come up with the most ecological Transportation means in the
17:51 world right so what you've got is a company working you would have a company working at Cross purposes and a lot of businesses well not a lot but businesses end up in that situation right I think that's what happened if you're following what happened with Yellow trucking right they filed for bankruptcy not too long ago okay Yellow trucking had been in business for 99 years you would think gosh a business that's been in business that long how could they not know well among the mistakes they made as I understand it from from reading some of the press reports is they were highly
18:27 leveraged and they they were they were so focused on dealing with that that I think they didn't they didn't focus on the main effort which is to supply the best transportation options for their clients and customers okay and so then you when you throw in and by the way part of that main effort is making sure that you have a a dynamic Workforce right and so by not focusing on the main effort all of a
19:02 sudden the supporting efforts are not getting the attention they need either okay because you're off trying to deal with the you know the debt load and all those kind of things and the business fell apart okay and they ended up in bankruptcy so making the identifying the main effort not only is it the most critical factor to the success of the business but it should then become a harmonizing Force among all the other parts of the business so if admin is going to make a decision about whatever
19:39 admin makes a decision about that decision should be made in light of is this going to support the main effort or is this going to be neutral to the main effort or is this actually going to detract from the main effort if it's going to detract it's not the right decision okay now if admin consistently finds itself wanting to make decisions that detract from the main effort something is wrong in the organization okay either the people in admin don't understand the
20:15 main effort don't understand how to support the main effort or the people who identified the main effort have made a mistake okay those are all possibilities so I'm not saying it's the fault of the admin people that they're not able to support the main effort it could be the support of senior leadership who has determined the main effort incorrectly and in fact if what you find is your supporting efforts are struggling to find a way to support the main effort
20:51 something's going on there that's not right and and it may very well be that the business has misidentified the main effort okay so that's why as you look at these various issues you need to be very very diligent in really examining what is the heart and soul of my business what are the of the business my business the company you're working for whatever okay and if you see a lot of disharmony in the various departments or aspects of the business okay then
21:29 it may be because people um don't understand what the main effort is and or how to support it or it may be that the main effort has been identified incorrectly and the business needs to in essence take a step back and say wait a minute we we seem to be all working at Cross purposes what's going on here that we're not able to harmonize our activity behind the true driving force of this business okay so as part of your so I'll give you
22:05 the um working with my one of my uh mentors uh my friend Bill gross so bill has identified the main effort in his business is how do I help my clients and my team members achieve their goals that is always the main effort in Bill's business right and that's that's the same thing in my business that's something I learned from Bill the main effort in my business is how do I support my clients
22:42 and team members in achieving their goals okay so if I'm doing something in business that isn't targeted to that main effort then I either have to change what I'm doing or maybe just not do it at all okay so if we're doing if if you're doing something that consistently seems to not be supporting the main effort I would ask yourself the question does this need to be done and the answer you the answer may surprise you because the answer may be
23:17 no well then don't do it okay or if it's or it may be just so trivial that you can have um you know just an admin person do it or something like that and you shouldn't be doing it because if if you're running the business or if you're um an important Cog in the business so to speak right if you're if if you are finding yourself consistently doing things that aren't supporting the business there's something wrong there okay now this is a
23:54 particularly important when the business is not our business if it's our business we can correct those kind of problems because it's our business so if we're finding ourselves kind of like feeling like we're spinning our Wheels wasting our time we can make the Strategic and operational decisions to change what it is to change our activities to make sure they're in line more importantly if it's our business if we have an employee who or you know a team member member who feels like their work is not meaningful then we have the ability to change their
24:32 responsibilities in a way to make sure that their responsibilities are indeed supporting the main effort okay now by the way that may come down to well they just don't see how their uh their activity or their responsibilities are supporting the main effort so when I was deployed on the aircraft carrier like a lot sometimes the people down on what are called the mess debts that's where people eat um they they felt very detached from anything that the the the ship and the Air Wing were accomplishing it's like
25:07 and there it is down there bacon bread and you know slinging hash and all that kind of stuff but here's the reality without the the what are called culinary culinary Specialists the cs's making food nothing's gonna happen on the ship because people are not going to have any energy because they're going to be starving okay and and it was the responsibility of the leadership in their Department to make sure that they understood how their support of the main effort was crucial right so we can do that as p as business owners and as as
25:43 people running our businesses when we are working for a company where perhaps we're not in the senior leadership okay if we feel ourselves detached from the main effort we have a responsibility to go to the you know our our leadership the people supervising us and say gosh I I feel like what I'm doing doesn't really make a difference here in this business am I missing something or am I really doing something that maybe shouldn't be done now that's a pretty brave thing to say because they might turn around and go you know what you're
26:18 right we don't need to do this you're fired I mean they're probably not going to happen especially in today's job market but um more likely they're going to respect the fact that that you've you've identified something as amiss and that and and you can work together with your leadership to make sure that your responsibilities align with achieving the main effort again both Junior and senior people have a responsibility to be to work within this harmonizing Force okay too often
26:55 people take the attitude look I'm not in leadership I don't need to deal with this well that's not really true especially in business today where businesses are much more streamlined far fewer people uh are there to get things done everybody has to take responsibility for understanding if not identifying the main effort and then making sure that what their what they're doing is is harmonizing with achieving that main effort all right well that's that's um what we've got that's what I've got for you today um we're going to be wrapping up this
27:31 part of Marine Corps War fighting Doctrine in the next week or two I think it is and then we'll start on another part of it but um in the meantime um I invite you to join me tomorrow at 12 30 PM Pacific time for my show people making money we're going to be talking about a simple way to eliminate debt so if you've got credit card debt if you've got an auto loan if you've got uh I don't know some maybe you did a bill consolidation loan whatever debt you've got okay we're gonna look at a simple
28:09 and efficient way to get out to get rid of that debt so that then you can start investing your money and building for the future so I invite you to join me again tomorrow people making money at 12 30 PM Pacific sick and then next week we will start all over again on Monday at 10 A.M with trusts and Estates weekly and Tuesday exactly seven days from now will be the next edition of business lessons from the military and and that's at uh 11 A.M Pacific time trust in Estates weekly on Monday is at 10 A.M uh
28:46 Pacific time so thank you very much for joining me I I hope you found this useful if you have thoughts comments criticisms um send me an email or drop a comment into any of our social media sites be glad to hear your thoughts and respond to them and if you're not a subscriber to the our YouTube Channel please do consider subscribing there'll be links to all of these in the show notes after this episode post so that's what that's it for today on business lessons from the military thanks again for joining me
29:21 and signing off as I always do Marie you are my Val all the best folks look forward to seeing you tomorrow