0:02 Militaries have ceremonies for seemingly everything. People are promoted in ceremonies. Commands change hands in ceremonies. Units activate and deactivate in ceremonies. New recruits take oaths. Retiring service members are formally recognized. Flags are raised and lowered according to prescribed customs. Awards are presented publicly. Fallen service members receive elaborate honors. To an outsider and sometimes to the people standing in formation, this can look like bureaucracy with flags.
0:37 Why devote scarce time to ritual when there is real work to do? Military organizations learned over centuries that large institutions cannot operate on rules and orders alone. People need to understand what matters, who has authority, what the organization remembers, what accomplishments it values, and what membership in the institution means. Ceremonies make those invisible things visible. They're part of the work, and that makes military
1:12 ceremony surprisingly relevant to business. Who [music] are you? And where are you going? [music] What do you want? 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 leadership practices and then distill
1:48 from them lessons that we can apply to our businesses and professional practices. So today, I'm going to be talking about this whole issue of of ceremonies and and the sort of pomp and circumstance of the military. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about saluting and and I realized I was really just dealing with one little part of a much larger issue. And so I decided to do this episode as as kind of a follow on. So, uh, for those of you who maybe
2:25 you've seen a video of a military ceremony or maybe you you actually were at one. Of course, if you're a veteran, undoubtedly you participated in numerous ceremonies. Uh, you know, you know what they're about or you may have a sense of what they're about. Uh but for people who are not involved in the military millia at all, I think there's a lot of misconceptions that float around about military ceremonies. And uh one of the I think one of the the most common ones is
3:00 that they're they're sort of pageantry left over from an earlier era. So it it is true that many ceremonies have ancient or early modern origins. Uh but their persistence is not simply nostal nostalgia. These ceremonies perform organizational functions like transferring authority, recognizing achievement, reinforcing identity and preserving institutional memory at at the especially when an organization is in transition as the military actually
3:38 always is. I think another misconception is that that somehow ceremony is the opposite of operational effectiveness. So the fact of the matter is militaries they can overdo ceremony [snorts] but disciplined ritual and operational uh effectiveness are not necessarily inherently opposed. So historically, drill and ceremony and discipline and battlefield organization
4:13 often developed alongside one another. They actually reinforced each other and made the made the unit and the military organization stronger. So another I think common misconception and this comes maybe from from watching movies especially uh o older movies um where you see you know huge parades of soldiers marching by and and there's all these you know senior officers in the stands sometimes with their wives and they're all kind of watching. and they're very stern and all the like like
4:49 these as if these ceremonies exist primarily for the senior officers. So there are ceremonies that of course reinforce the hierarchy but many in fact I think most actually focus on the institution and the units and the individuals within it uh rather than you know being an opportunity for sort of a grandization of you know senior military leadership. So, promotions, uh, retirements, uh, awards, memorials,
5:25 oaths, and changes of command. So, they all communicate different organizational messages that are important for everyone in the military as well as people connected to it rather than being, you know, for the sole benefit of senior officers. So another one is is that the the the military you know it it it it so loves tradition because it it resists change. So there is an aspect of the military that is very high bound and and it really
6:01 holds on to its traditions yet at the same time it's it's adopting radically new technologies. So, I was just before uh doing this show, I was listening to a podcast talking about new sources of energy and how deeply involved the Pentagon is in the research for this because they're looking for ways to better power the fleet, tanks, etc. Right? And so with within an organization that is constantly having to evolve uh how it
6:39 fights and and wins our nation's battles, there needs to be a foundation that people in that organization can stand upon. And so the two are not uh again the two are not intention. They they are self-reinforcing. So, and then finally, uh, many of these ceremonies are detailed, in some cases, highly detailed. And I think there's a tendency to to to have the the the perspective, well, all this detail, it doesn't really matter. But the fact of the matter is
7:17 that that these ceremonies are so highly prescribed is part of the purpose because they bring a continuity to what happens in the military and they give service members the ability to engage in the proper response to something without having to make it up exilio anytime something happens And so the the institution, the military has decided as an institution, you know, when this event happens, this is how
7:53 we're going to acknowledge it. So probably the most um awesome one, and you know, I rarely use that word are the honors given to a service member who has died in combat. So, it's a very difficult situation, heart-wrenching uh for the people who knew the personally. And so, there's a very dignified, specific way that that ceremony is handled. And the people who are taking part in it, they know what to expect. And so they can actually focus on the
8:29 loss if there are the people grieving or they can focus on paying attention to the people who are grieving rather than having wait what what happens next. So we they don't have to be concerned with the logistics. They can be concerned with the feelings and and the process that's going on. Right? So looking at ceremonies then from this historic perspective you know the question arises. So where did these military ceremonies from? Where did they
9:05 come right? So there is no single point of origin for them. Ancient armies used standards. They had religious rights. There were you know they had like um triumphal arches. They had oaths, they had music, they haderary practices and public displays. All of that has existed since really time immemorial. Uh and and and that's because armies have needed mechanisms for creating group identity and legitimizing authority. And it's
9:42 it's likely that that's where these various ceremonies had their origin. So as European armies uh became increasingly professional during the 17th and 18th centuries, so then military became military behavior became more standardized. I talked about this in the episode on saluting. So drill became standardized, uniforms became standardized, rank became increasingly standardized and formalized and ceremonies also became they they they be
10:19 they became standardized to cod codify all of these other aspects of the military. And so it's it's it's there's an important uh connection here and that's that ceremonies grew alongside military bureaucracy because large organizations need standardized ways of communicating meaning, right? And and that's really what's at the core of ceremonies. So, you know, you also see like why why are all these flags around?
10:55 Why are they so important? Right? So this this is another I think example of something that was a practical aspect of the military has been retained even though we don't use it for practical reasons anymore. So uh you know in military history banners, flags they they identified a unit. They made it possible for friendly units to coordinate with each other and for opposing units to know uh you know whom was the enemy, right? And so they they
11:31 they they they gave the ability to make distinctions on the battlefield and they were on long poles because sometimes they had to be above all the the the dirt and smoke and dust of the battlefield, right? So um they also then provided a rallying point um amid these battlefield conditions and uh losing those colors right had enormous symbolic significance. So if you've ever played the game Strateggo was one of my favorite games as a kid. The way you beat the other side was capturing their
12:07 flag. So you could capture you know privates and majors and captains and all that kind of stuff. But in the end, if you didn't capture the flag, you didn't win. Right? So the other another sort of um tactical function of flags um is is they they give representation of what is otherwise a fairly abstract organization. Right? So we have this company of soldiers. It's really just a group of soldiers. How do they identify themselves? And the re the answer is that they [snorts] do
12:44 it because they have a flag that represents their unit. And so that's why flags uh frequently place uh I mean sorry that's why units frequently place flags or colors or standards at their center. You see them in ceremonies um all the time. It's saying that it it we're we we're repre we're representing something larger than the sum of us as a group of people right so another very common aspect of ceremonies is is music and you know again why why
13:20 all the music I mean you know we're not we're gonna we're gonna dance right but you know drums and trumpets and fs and bugles other instruments Just like with flags, they had initially a practical purpose and that was um for example bugle calls. They could be heard uh you know throughout the battlefield and different calls meant different things. One call meant, if you've ever watched neo cavalry movies, this is this is reasonably historically accurate. There was the bugle call for charge.
13:55 There was the bugle call for retreat. There was the bugle call for betting down. We called it taps, right? U we well we still call it taps, right? So sound could trans could could travel over a long distance and that made it a very effective means of communicating, right? Also, musical calls, they they they helped sort of regulate the day at a time when very few people had watches uh and and you know, telling the time of day by watching the sun move was not particularly exact, right? And so the m
14:32 these these musical calls, these bugle calls, they they told when, you know, it was time to eat. It again, it was it was time to rest or whatever was going on. that all became part of the routine of the day and then [snorts] so then some of these practices eventually became uh part of uh ceremonies. So I used to uh head up a uh what's called a funeral honors unit and we had a bugler there and after the folding and um
15:08 presentation of the flag uh we would blow taps right. So taps originally was just what was blown when it was time the the the bugle call of when it was time to basically go to sleep. But now it's also taking on this this symbolic meaning of sort of laying somebody to rest for the final time and it has that very sort of mournful quality.
15:34 >> [clears throat]
15:34 >> It is interesting to note that um I never had an an actual u bugler who could blow taps live. The bugles they use now have a recording device in them and and so they're holding the bugle and and the recording is being played out of the bugle. Um and it looks like they're blowing taps but they're actually just playing this recording. Right. So, uh, you know, as as technology, um, you know, changed, like as I just noted with the bugle, so we didn't need bugle calls anymore to organize the
16:10 battlefield. We had, you know, uh, phones connected by wires and then we had wireless walkie-talkies and radios and all of that, right? So, so nowadays the technology aspect of music isn't necessary uh during a battle. Um but but the the the evocativeness of music remains very power a very powerful uh feature in in the military, right? and and so um with respect to certain types of ceremonies. So for example um I I
16:47 participated in my career during a number of what are called change of command ceremonies and they took place when the commanding officer of a unit was changing from one person to another. So we did several of them when I was with the airwing and a squadron commander would change or or the commander of the airwing would change. So the fact of the matter is command is a very abstract concept. I mean we all know what it means but you you can't see it, you can't touch it, right? And so
17:22 there's no way to show authority moving from, you know, the outgoing commander to the incoming commander, right? Transferring from one individual to another. And so the ceremony makes this uh this this transfer visible. And although there's often times more parts, the central uh part of a change of command ceremony is when the outgoing commander reads his order to detach, meaning he's leaving the unit, and the incoming commander
17:59 reads his orders to report, become the commander, right? And it's at that moment at least in in you know ceremonially that authority has transferred from the outgoing to the incoming commander and it makes it visible. It makes it real right and so uh you know it solidifies this this idea that up until this moment this person is responsible and now from this moment going forward this person is responsible. The institution has
18:35 continuity, authority has smoothly transferred over and now we can go back to our day-to-day work. Right? So it it it it again the the change of command ceremony makes visible what is otherwise just a a very abstract concept. So [snorts] uh another common ceremony is uh ceremonies for for promotion or awards. So I remember when I was with the submarine squadron um I kind of got in a little bit of trouble
19:11 with my commanding officer uh I was I was heading home uh on a on a Friday uh midday. I had the the deal I had with my uh with my CO was I would spend the week uh down in San Diego with the unit. Um but I was permitted to leave a few hours early on Friday so I could spend the weekend with my family and then I'd come back on Sunday evening. And so midday this particular Friday, jumped in my car. I'm driving from San Diego or PointLoma specifically to Los Angeles and the traffic is getting kind of thick and all of a sudden I get a call from my
19:47 CEO. I'm like, "Oh no, what what did I do?" And uh I I I you know, I I answer the phone. I go, you know, "Hello, sir. How can I help you?" And he says he says, "Uh, didn't you forget something, Chaplain?" I'm like, [laughter] "Uh, I I I can't think of anything, sir." and and he said, "Uh, well, uh, the the, um, chief staff officer tells me that you got promoted." I'm like, "Oh, well, yes, sir. I I I'm on the promotion list." And he's like, "Don't
20:22 you think you should have told me?" And I said, "Well, you know, sir, I'm a chaplain. Promotion isn't really a thing." But it was clear he was really um not upset. that he was disappointed that I think I didn't feel it was important enough for him to know that one of his officers had been promoted. Right? So, so you know commanders they want to recognize their people and so there are ceremonies for promotions, there are ceremonies to receive awards uh and and and they give a commanding
20:58 officer the opportunity to display um in in a concrete way how the institution itself and this particular commander feels about the qualities that are worth rewarding and and that's very important because again it it it reinforces what's important in in in my case in the Navy but in any in in any branch of the service right so whether it's you know courage leadership uh service sacrifice
21:34 whatever those are uh to highlight those to the unit through an awards ceremony or promotion ceremony is is it it it it it binds that unit more closely together. Um also um often times there will be non-military people at these ceremonies and it's saying to them that you know the time that your service member spends away from you is is important. They're doing important things, things that are
22:10 valued by the organization. And this is our way of showing our appreciation for your forbearance in your, you know, father, mother, child, you know, not being around as much as you might like, right? And so again, it it it it's binding the unit and the larger family of the unit together. And then, you know, we have retirement ceremonies and and memorial services. So, it's important for an organization to say goodbye. If it's a retirement
22:45 ceremony, it's it's it's kind of goodbye and and you know, as we used to say in the Navy, um fair winds and following seas, like you know, best wishes uh you know, as as you continue your life. um if it's for a fallen comrade. So, it's an opportunity to to say goodbye as one mourning a loss that that can't be made good, right? And and part of the heart of an organization is in how it says goodbye. And so there are some of the most elaborate ceremonies surrounding
23:22 these two aspects of saying goodbye. So, uh, how did how is it that military organizations then learned to use these ceremonies and to make the invisible visible, right? And so I I talked about um the the you know the history already. Um the the you know the evolution really was going from function to symbolism, right? And so, um, this was part of, uh,
24:00 the development of military organizations, a part of what we might call the heart of the military. I think there's a tendency to consider military organizations to be heartless. Quite to the contrary. Um, they are very heartfilled and heartfelt organizations. Uh I remember when I was rotating out of Okinawa after having been there for over three years and they there was a ceremony held uh for you know for me to receive what's called an end of tour
24:35 award after which we had they threw a little reception for my family and me to say goodbye and they asked me to say a few words and you know I talked about what it was like to be to work with all these fine people and how hopefully, you know, a as our careers progressed, we would look back at it at this time in Okinawa where we did such fine work working together um and and it would have meaning for us um in in in in our larger lives. And afterwards, our our
25:12 senior enlisted uh person, he was a chief uh chief petty officer. He he came to me, he said, "I've never cried at a ceremony until now." Right? So, it's it's this evolution to getting to the heart of the matter that I think is so important to recognize in the ceremonies that uh the the the military holds. And I know from for my as a chaplain, participating in those ceremonies was among the most
25:47 meaningful things I did because they helped people come to terms with some of the terrible things that happened in the military and also um uh sort of glory in our successes um in meeting our mission and and in being able to recognize true excellence among our comrades. Okay, so let's take a quick break and then we'll talk about some business lessons.
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27:01 or visit magnumprops.com. Okay. So, lesson number one, ritual tells people what matters, right? So, every ceremony represents a decision about importance. And the fact of the matter is militaries don't conduct elaborate ceremonies around sort of routine administrative actions. they reserve those ceremonies for uh for people about whom we we need to
27:38 take notice or remember. Right? So whenever businesses make choices either uh intentionally or accidentally they're deciding what gets celebrated, what gets announced, who receives public recognition, what happens when someone is promoted, what happens when someone leaves. Right? So, while I'm not suggesting you necessarily want to make, you know, elaborate ceremonies as elaborate as the
28:13 military does, uh, you know, businesses, for example, where they throw a a, you know, goodbye party for someone who's retiring or someone who's moving on or they have a party for someone who's getting a promotion, even if it's even if it's relatively small, it's it's recognizing and telling everyone else what the organization thinks is important. Okay? And and so um employees notice the difference between stated values and
28:50 ceremonial values. And so the ceremonies also hopefully are reinforcing to leaders in the organization what it is they need to be emphasizing day by day. If they find the ceremonies and everyday actions to be at odds, there is a problem there and they need to correct that. And so the ceremony is is a way of uh periodically having some self-examination by the organization itself. So design
29:26 rituals about uh around what you genuinely want the organization to value. So don't merely tell employees what matters. Show them by deciding what deserves attention. So that's number one. Ritual tells people what matters. Number two, ceremonies turn transitions into commitments. So a military ceremony frequently happens at transitional points. I've talked about some of these uh an I
30:02 talked about a change of command and a retirement. um but also uh enlistments and commissionings and I mentioned promotions already. Each of these mark a turning point, a transition in either the individual's life or the life of the unit or both. Like for example, in the case of a change of command, right? So a ceremony creates a psychological boundary. Before this moment, this was the situation. After this moment, there's a new situation. And especially
30:39 for the individual about whom the ceremony is held or for whom the ceremony is held, [clears throat] they now see themselves in a different light and other people should see them in that different light as well. So uh all of these are important. They they they change how we as individuals view our attachment to the unit. So businesses often blur these transitions. So you know someone gets promoted and you know they simply start seeing receiving you
31:15 know like different emails or something like that. So a manager assume responsibility for a team without ever having anything explicitly acknowledged about this change. Right? So a major project will start without any sort of clear sign of commencement. All of these things can be made uh I think more um impactful um by having a deliberate uh ritual if not a full-blown ceremony um about what
31:50 is changing, who is responsible, what is expected now and why are we committing ourselves to this new situation. Right? And [clears throat] that is part of team building. So important traditions uh I'm sorry important transitions deserve markers and we can do that in business. We don't need to have a flag or a speech every time but um it does need to carry enough weight that people recognize something is different now
32:27 change has occurred. So ceremonies turn transitions into commitments. Okay. Next, recognition teaches the audience, not just the recipient. So I I alluded to this a few minutes ago. Military awards recognize individuals. Um but the audience is also part of the point. So while the situ while the citation explains what the person did, it redounds on all the people there that it's being publicly
33:04 uh announced what this person did and and that by through that that announcement it's it's showing that the organization thinks this is valuable, right? Especially for the family of of the person being recognized, it helps it helps recognize um their um uh I I lost the word their sacrifice, right? And having their service member away from them or in danger or whatever, right? So recognition is a form of
33:40 organizational education, right? people learn what good looks like by seeing what gets genuinely recognized, right? So, uh when businesses examine um what they a what their awards actually teach, they're they're answering questions like, you know, do you reward results regardless of how they were achieved? Do you uh do you know is it only revenue generation that receives visible recognition? What about someone who
34:16 solved a very complex uh ethical problem uh that that the organization faced? Uh you know shouldn't that be recognized? Don't we want to run ethical organizations? Right? So um do people who prevent problems receive recognition receive less recognition than people who you know dramatically fix them? And and if so why wouldn't it be better just to uh you know prevent problems? Isn't that at least as important as solving them if not more important? Right? So the specificity of the recognition also
34:53 matters. So you know great job teaches essentially nothing right it's describing the behavior the decisions the sacrifice and the results that tell others what should be repeated right so the the the the heart of this lesson is that recognition is a signaling system right and every award has two uh two audiences one is the person receiving receing it and the other is everyone else who's watching. So lesson number
35:28 three, recognition teaches the audience uh not just the recipient. Okay. Uh number four, organizations need continuity when leaders change. So I talked uh about a military change of command where we show the distinction between the outgoing and the incoming leader and provide that continuity for the unit. So businesses can become sometimes dangerously independent on
36:03 individual personalities. So the founder becomes the company. We saw this with the Walt with what was known as Walt Disney Productions. The company started by Walt and Roy Disney. And after Walt Disney died, there was this attitude of what would Walt do and it almost destroyed the company because once Walt Disney, this unique individual was gone, the company had to chart a new course, right? So, uh you know, charismatic executives can also become sort of the culture, right? and and a team becomes inseparable from its manager. None of
36:41 these are healthy for the organization because they create an even greater succession risk. It's it's enough that sometimes people will leave or god forbid die and the organization has to bring in new leadership. It's even worse when people are sort of almost deified laab deal as we say uh and and and and that further disrupts any kind of continuity. So um leaders should deliberately reinforce
37:16 institutional continuity. So what remains after I leave? How am I demon demonstrably grooming new leadership to replace me? Which I would argue is the first job of any leader, right? What belongs to the organization rather than belonging to me, especially for a founder, right? Uh what should my successor inherit? What traditions should continue without me? Right? what does this organization value beyond
37:51 that that is um maybe comes from me but is retained as part of the character of the organization. Right? So healthy organizations honor leaders without becoming dependent on them and that is a very important lesson for from from military ceremonies that businesses can take. There is there is going to be a turnover of leadership. How do we prepare for it? So, organizations need to think about the continuity when leadership when leaders change and how
38:28 they're going to convey and make that happen. Okay, that's number four. Number five, don't eliminate rituals simply because they aren't productive. Right? Doing air quotes here. So modern uh modern management often treats time as though every minute must produce some sort of immediately measurable outcome. Um you know whether it's you know KPIs or or you know meeting needed deliverables or whatever. So anything ceremonial then
39:04 can can appear to be inefficient. Military ceremonies reveal a different perspective toward organizational value. So some activities exist purely to create identity, to create memory, to build trust, to provide closure, and to connect generations of an institution in an in an unbroken chain. And it is worth develop uh devoting time to those
39:41 ceremonies in order to maintain the integrity and the values of the unit even though they're not you know immediately producing the winning of a battle or or the winning of a war. Right? So just because we can't uh objectively measure a benefit from ceremonies doesn't mean that the benefits are imaginary. They they exist. They exist profoundly. And the the the you know the the
40:16 challenge is to create ceremonies for your organization that bring the best aspects of these various things that I mentioned creating identity building trust providing closure etc while not becoming so elaborate that people do start to feel they're a waste of time. So the correct question is not is this ritual effective. What organizational purpose does this ritual serve and is that purpose worth the time it consumes?
40:53 Right? So the distinction is purpose and that's what ceremonies are there to enhance. So the the fifth lesson, don't eliminate rituals just because they aren't productive. Just ensure that whatever ceremonies and rituals you do embed in your organization have a purpose. They are productive. So um you know summing up why does the military have so many ceremonies? And it's because military organiz
41:28 organizations have learned something that sometimes businesses forget. And that is people don't experience organizations as charts and polies, policies and strategies. They experience them through moments. The same way we experience life. So the first time they put on a uniform, the first oath they take, the first promotion they receive, the first award presented to them in front of their peers, the first time a commander relinquish relinquishes uh command, the first time a new
42:05 commander accepts it, um the retirement of of of a you know beloved colleague. All of these things are how we experience the organization and that is what people in the military tend to take away. That is why so many veterans fondly remember their time in the military because the military takes the time to create the circumstances
42:40 that through their heart binds service members to their service branch and to the larger American military as a whole. So, uh, are, you know, do your ceremonies reinforce your culture or do they reveal the culture you actually have that isn't the one you want? And so, that's if you look right below you, you'll see links to social media. Drop a comment in in in how do you use uh social media? I'm sorry, how to use
43:16 social media. How do you use ceremonies and rituals in your organization to reinforce the purpose and values of your company? I'd love to hear your thoughts. And as always, I'm happy to comment on them. Okay. So then, real quickly, uh, schedule of shows. Mondays, these are all Pacific time, by the way. Mondays 10:00 a.m. Trust in estates weekly. Tuesday 10:00 a.m. like today, business lessons from the military. Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m. People making money. And every other Thursday at 5:00 pm, join me at Jiggers's place for a cocktail and a
43:52 schmoo, and we will talk about all the things not related to finances like books and movies and ideas and relationships and all of that. 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 are my bell. Courage at all times, my