The WAY to WOW Shows
2 Principles for Winning in Business
February 28, 2023
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:07] foreign hello and welcome to the way to wow business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin Bammel and in case you're wondering why is uh a business guy and a rabbi um talking about business lessons from the military so I was a chaplain in the United States Navy uh for a total of 16 years um don't ask me why it didn't stay for 20. it's it's a long-sorted story um but in any event I spent uh

[0:43] um of that 16 years approximately 10 of it on active duty the other six basically in the reserves and during that time I not only had an opportunity to learn a considerable amount about military war fighting Doctrine but also advise and consult with military leaders and and and people in the military from the most Junior to the most senior um as in in the Navy that would be seaman recruit to you know vice admiral um I I don't think I ever actually

[1:18] consulted with a full Admiral but uh but you know pretty close and um as a Chaplain uh was one of the primary advisors to whoever the commanding officer was for the particular unit to which I was assigned so I did time with uh in Naval Aviation I did time with submarines in the naval special Warfare Community as well as a tour of Duty my first one with the Marine Corps and this show as as I mentioned in the introduction last week is going to be examining military Doctrine military

[1:55] history and the great leaders from the military examining how they pursued the the the goal their goals within the military of it might have been winning a battle or winning a war or it might have just been some kind of leadership lesson in fact I shared one of those last week about General George Patton one of my favorite uh military leaders someone I've studied a great deal about and I I invite you to go to our YouTube channel

[2:31] and and take a look at that show I think if you've seen the eponymous movie Patton you will be surprised to hear this particular lesson from Patton's life because it does not at all fit with the character as he's portrayed in the movie even though it is historically accurate so today I'm going to start we're gonna we're gonna start by examining uh War fighting Doctrine um for the Marine Corps so I mentioned my first Tour of Duty was in Okinawa Okinawa with the Marine Corps and I had

[3:08] the opportunity to attend the expeditionary Warfare school program there for about a year um by way of kind of learning what the Marine Corps was all about as the son of a naval officer um my my father had a love-hate relationship with the Marine Corps as he used to explain to me they were a bunch of Jar heads um except uh if you were in a bar with a bunch of Marines and the Army showed up and in which case they were your closest buddies and you joined with them to you know beat the heck out of the the soldiers there so you know life back in

[3:44] the uh you know 1950s and 60s I guess so um I'm gonna start out today talking about some fundamental principles of War fighting and translating them into principles we can use as a foundation for building our businesses okay now I I again I mentioned this last week in in my introduction I I do not believe that being in business is the same thing as being in a war clearly there is a very big difference

[4:20] between the two as we're seeing you know what go what's going on in Ukraine right now where where the the death toll is I I believe over a hundred thousand I think for both sides each so business is not an existential um activity from my perspective I I have met people who think it is an existential activity um and and I do not agree with that philosophy at all however there are principles that come from how

[4:56] War needs to be fought that when modified and really help us understand what we're up against as when we start and run a business and what that path to success looks like what we need to do and so that's that's the perspective I'm going to be talking about each week um it's it's Tuesday 10 30 a.m on the Pacific coast it's 1 30 p.m on the East Coast an hour in as I always say to Mountain and Central Time and and we're going to spend a half an hour each week

[5:32] talking about these principles so without further Ado let's get started I I developed a little um PowerPoint presentation oops here we go so there you go oh and uh let's see where let's see if we can get this into here we go play from the start okay so this is uh the way to wow Show Business lessons from the military right this is uh and this is our our logo for the way to wow show nothing uh too exciting here so as as those of you who have seen the show before know everything I do relates

[6:07] to this concept I developed originally uh when I was with a Naval Aviation unit I was with uh um Harrier Air Wing 14 otherwise known as cag14 we were deployed on the nuclear aircraft carrier the USS Ronald Reagan and I needed a way to help the sailors and Marines in my uh Air Wing understand resiliency while they were on this uh particular deployment so what was what was different about it was

[6:43] we all got loaded onto the ship in San Diego I believe it was in February uh if memory serves and we no sooner pulled out from the dock when one of our nuclear reactors had to be shut down now a nuclear carrier has two nuclear reactors um and it's specifically because they they want redundancy because the reality is if you're out in the middle of the ocean and you have aircraft in the air and you had only one nuclear reactor and it had to be shut down now the ship is

[7:19] going to be dead in the water and it is not possible to recover those aircraft if the ship is not moving so you need to have two two power plants basically to make sure that even if one goes down the other one can continue to propel the ship at least until the aircraft are recovered and then if you have to stop and do repairs or whatever you can but you're not going to have all your Pilots ditching their planes in in the ocean so there we are steaming off the coast of Southern California

[7:54] um not able to do anything other than wait for that reactor to be fixed and I was on the deck of the carrier pretty much every day because you could go up there and and and walk for exercise about a thousand feet long and I'm up there with the sailors and and a number of them are saying hey hey raps that was my call sign at the Air Wing rabs Rabbi they point to the show and they go see right there I lived to Inland from there you know like why am I on this ship doing nothing rather than at home with my family right so

[8:29] and then from there we we finally got the um we finally got the the power plant fixed and the earthquake hit Japan this is in 2011 and there was a tsunami if you recall and there was pretty significant damage there and so we got tasked by the Navy to steam directly across the Pacific Ocean to Japan to help out with the rescue efforts and and the various humanitarian assistants that that Japan needed now you'll say well wait a minute I I thought carriers never traveled without other ships on that

[9:06] that in World War II that was certainly the case so if you're thinking about World War II movies maybe you've seen Midway or something like that that was the case but in our case um the carrier could go faster than all the other ships that might have been with us in our in our um uh strike group and so awfully went on our own and we had our aircraft to protect us if we really needed it in any of in which is now how how things work in a a um strike an aircraft uh aircraft carrier strike group and and there we were on the scene sailing back and forth through the

[9:41] radioactive plume that had been caused by the reactor meltdown um from from the the earthquake there in Japan and and by the way I like to let you know if the lights go out and you still see me glowing the Navy has assured us at that time there was no danger from the radiation so it just must be you know I don't know something about my Inner Glow or or whatever that is although all kidding aside it turned out that um the Navy was not exactly uh correct in saying that there was no impact on any of us there there were I have one friend in particular who unfortunately

[10:18] um it was was disabled as a result of that and so we have this bizarre um situation where we were steaming back and forth up up and down the coast of Japan and we had uh what was it about uh I don't know 3 500 4 000 people on this ship it's like a big college dormitory on the water and the vast majority of us were not allowed outside the skin of the ship because of the radiation right and so what do these Sailors do and and what they tended to do was work and eat

[10:54] and of course those are fine activities but they're they're not enough for sustaining um healthy resilience and so I came up with something that I called at the time um the three pillars of fitness and it did not look exactly like this um it was organized a little bit different way and then many many years later when I was looking for a way to help um my you know other my fellow citizens here in the United States i i i reworked the uh three pillars of Fitness into what I called the three pillars of

[11:29] attainment and the nine Realms are the same as what I used back then they're organized in a little bit different way now that I think actually makes a lot more sense I wish I had come up with this you know back in 2011 this this organization anyway and as we talk about military business lessons from the military we're going to be dealing primarily in this realm the finances realm here in the Pursuits pillar of the three pillars of attainment having said that though

[12:04] we're oftentimes oops no I need to go back there we go we're we're oftentimes going to find that these principles will apply in other areas of Our Lives they may apply to relationships they may apply to ourself how we identify ourselves what kind of mindset we need to be in and so while our focus is going to be primarily business uh from time to time I will mention some of these other Realms in in order to make this information hopefully more deeply applicable to your life now I

[12:41] will say too as as someone who started a number of businesses over the decades that business is a very holistic activity so when especially when you're the business owner you're the founder it really permeates all areas of your life and and I've talked about that um in a couple of shows that I've done on my other show people making money and I invite you to take a look at those episodes as well so the thing is having a business especially a startup can absolutely consume us to the exclusion

[13:19] of everything else and many a business founder has has gotten successful and looked back and and realized his family life is just in tatters divorced estranged from his children and and you know not in good health um not in in good mental health as well no Hobbies nothing to distract from the business and so there they are maybe financially successful um but but but the rest of their life in tatters and so uh you know as we talk

[13:55] about being successful in business I invite you to think about some of these other areas of your life so that you can really Embrace what business will do for your life more broadly okay one of the things I mentioned quite frequently is being in our own businesses typically will give us a little more control over our schedules so if we work for someone then we we pretty much have to work according to the schedule that they set when we work for ourself we're going to have to set

[14:30] the schedule now that can be difficult because it can encourage us to procrastinate or not not get done what we need to get done but it can also allow us if if for example we have a child who's got a sporting event in the afternoon when normally we'd be working all right so maybe we'll take a couple of hours off to go see our child play soccer right and that just means maybe we have to put in an hour or two in the evening after our child goes to sleep or something like that so we can do that and we don't need to ask anybody's permission we can organize our schedules that way and and that's a tremendous benefit of being in business for

[15:05] ourselves so let's move on then to this is in in Marine Corps War fighting Doctrine the very first thing you'll encounter are the fundamentals of warfare now obviously that's what the Marines the Marine Corps is there to do it's there to fight right there's a a joke that I have with a friend of mine that that's you know from all the way back from my days being being with the Marine Corps if you absolutely positively need it destroyed overnight call the Marine Corps right that's that's what they do so but we're gonna

[15:40] translate this into business fundamentals okay and I'm to be honest I'm not sure we're going to get through all of these uh today I may split this up and finish this uh next week and and that's fine I'd rather take the time to really understand them than to rush through them so the First Fundamental principle in war fighting and in business is unity of effort and and it may sound so basic like of course you want Unity

[16:16] of effort but how many businesses have you worked for or observed where it doesn't actually exist so whether there's infighting among the employees whether there isn't a Clear Vision on the part of leadership as to what the business is trying or is seeking to accomplish they don't have a clear Mission they don't have clear goals whether the business has has lost its place in the marketplace and now it's just kind of drifting along and therefore nobody really knows what they

[16:52] need to be doing everybody is just they go into the office each day or into the onto the factory floor wherever it is and they just bang out whatever it is they think they're supposed to do for their time there and that's it that is rampant in the business World absolutely rampant in the business world and it's unfortunate because eventually it will erode if not completely destroy the company the organization and so I would say that the very first principle

[17:27] of any business and the primary responsibility of the leader of that business is creating Unity of effort okay now in order to do that the mission of the business must be clear to leadership what is it we're trying to accomplish okay now maybe it's as simple as make money by selling hamburgers I mean I I don't know what the you know mission of McDonald's is I'll just use that because it's you know a story business in in

[18:04] America right and it's I believe the largest restaurant chain um in in the world so I maybe their mission is to sell you know more hamburgers than you know that have ever been sold in history or whatever it is okay if that's it then the first thing that that the leadership needs to do is be very clear about that mission and then be very certain about X explaining that mission to everyone in the company that's step number one and then step

[18:39] number two they need to provide the resources the ability for every employee to be a part of the effort to meet that mission that is the primary obligation of leadership in a business okay and we've heard a lot recently over things like stakeholder capitalism or or ESG all this kind of stuff I I advise you set all of that aside

[19:15] the primary the fundamental reason that there is leadership especially senior leadership in a company is to be very very clear in what the mission is and then communicating that and providing the atmosphere the resources so that every single employee in that business can pursue that mission that is how you create Unity of effort

[19:50] okay it's going to mean doing everything possible to keep politics when I mean politics I mean corporate politics out of the business because once corporate politics jocking for position and all that kind of stuff enters into the equation now you start to erode Unity of effort okay imagine being on the battlefield or maybe you're doing house to house um a house to house operation clearing out you know terrorists or something like that and what's foremost on you

[20:28] know the Lieutenant's mind is how do I get an advantage over the lieutenant of the other of the other uh platoon so that I'll have a better chance of of being promoted to Captain how do you think that's going to work out for his Marines probably not very well because there's no Unity of effort there or there's a lesser Unity of effort what that Lieutenant needs to be concerned about is what is our mission and how do I accomplish that mission and

[21:04] rally my entire platoon around accomplishing that mission hopefully with no casualties and if and by the way here's the interesting thing if that Lieutenant is successful in creating that Unity of effort I.E completing the mission and no casualties guess what his chances of being promoted are very very good okay because that's how it works in the Marine Corps now you may say well gosh

[21:39] that that's a little bit naive Kevin we all know that influence in business and to a certain extent influence in the military can give you a leg up in in promotion that's certainly true I I'm not I'm not going to deny it it's absolutely true having said that if you find if you have ever found yourself in an organization where pursuing the mission and completing it well does not lead you to success then you know that that organization

[22:15] lacks Unity of effort and in the long run it's probably I'm not saying it's going to go out of business but it's not going to be as successful as another organization that pursues Unity of effort okay so that is the number one and if you as a business owner a Founder okay that is your number one responsibility to be able to articulate that mission to convey it convincingly to everyone else working in

[22:53] the company get them on board and then provide them with the resources that they need in order to in a unified way pursue that mission okay if you can do that you will dramatically increase the chances that you'll be successful okay so that's fundamental principle number one fundamental principle number two concentration of power okay that's what it is in in war fighting Doctrine concentration of power in the business world I think we want to think of it more as concentration of resources

[23:32] okay so in in war fighting as you can imagine you you we think of it in terms of power fire power for example so if you're looking to um uh you know conquer a particular um area then you're gonna concentrate all your Firepower on that area whether it's your howitzers your tanks your aircraft or if it's a coastal position you may have Naval guns offshore whatever whatever power it is you can bring to bear on achieving that

[24:09] objective you want it concentrated as much as possible to just overwhelm the enemy okay that's from a war fighting perspective now we're not going to use missiles and bombs and and all that kind of stuff um in in the business World obviously but we are going to mount resources we're going to have Capital money to use in order to obtain in order to pursue our mission we're also going to have people what are you know what human resources right we

[24:45] all know that term I I'm never quite comfortable with that turning Human Resources it kind of song we're gonna go I don't know dig up some people here and we even say that well we need to dig up some more employees like I don't know or pick them off the tree or something the people right people are and and this is said so often it's a cliche and yet it's true people are the most important resource in a business you can have all the capital you want but if the people squander the capital you're not going to be successful and and you can have all the capital you want and if you don't have people the capital's just going to sit there and do nothing okay so people are a crucial resource so

[25:25] is knowledge you may have um patents intellectual property that that the business owns or is developing um so whatever the resources are you want all of those resources focused on achieving that mission you don't want them sidelined into corporate politics or siphoned off like you know they talk about a restaurant that what they call shrinkage where Foods sort of somehow disappears out the back door right that

[26:00] all that does is it damages your margins when you're running a restaurant and makes it harder for the restaurant to be profitable if there's Unity of effort and a concentration of resources then there's far less likely that that will happen because people will understand we need to take all of the resources of that restaurant and focus them on achieving what it is we're trying to achieve and maybe it's you know top customer satisfaction maybe it's providing a venue for people to enjoy the the the special moments in their

[26:37] lives whatever the mission of that restaurant is if everybody feels a part of it then they'll be more likely to concentrate all their resources all the resources they bring as a person all the resources you make available to them in order for them to do the work of running that restaurant okay well look where we we got through two we've got two four six we've got eight of these um so next week I'm going to continue with these fundamental principles initiative agility Etc and you'll and and I think you'll see as we go farther and farther into

[27:13] this not only do these build on each other we just saw how concentration of resources and it helps build uh Unity of effort okay we'll also see that they work they all work not interchangeably they all work in concert to make success more likely okay so I invite you to be with me every Tuesday at 10 30 a.m Pacific Time 1 30 p.m eastern time and an hour in for Central

[27:49] and mountain time and we will talk about more business lessons from the military oh there goes Siri she just likes to chime in periodically when I'm talking so I'm your host Kevin bemel and tomorrow just to make you aware every Wednesday at 12 30 p.m Pacific 3 30 p.m Eastern is my other show people making money where we talk about a broader range of topics related to financial success so tomorrow I'm going to be

[28:25] talking about some fundamentals of investing the basic types of investment and and and how they work so you can start understanding once you start your business you start earning money right you're going to want to make some Investments maybe a retirement account Etc and so I'm going to talk about those tomorrow I invite you to subscribe to our YouTube channel there will be a link in the show notes for you to do that and that way every time uh a new uh show starts you'll you'll you'll get notified and or you'll get notified when it posts when a new show posts at the at the end

[29:00] and you can go and view it uh after the fact let your friends know that were here on Tuesday mornings and Wednesday midday and and if they're interested in professional success this is the place to be so thank you very very much for joining me today and I look forward to seeing you again next week and as I do on the on the people making money show I'm going to sign off in this this show the same way and that is in in in paying tribute to my dear friend Marie darling big supporter of the military that you

[29:35] and your husband were you are still my bell thank you very very much and we will see you next week