0:03 foreign once again my computer goes crazy right at the beginning of the show so let's let's here we go start over again hello and welcome to the way to wow business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and if you uh have missed the last couple of shows and are wondering why uh you know a business guy and a rabbi is talking about um business lessons from the military is because I spent 16 years in the United States Navy uh as a Chaplain
0:40 um during which time I worked with Marines and sailors and soldiers and Airmen and Coast Guardsmen and even Public Health um I forget what it's called there's like a public health core officials on various things and and through that um including my time at the Marine Corps distance learning program learned quite a bit about military Doctrine um and as well as a student of military history and and especially great leaders
1:15 of the military have come to appreciate the lessons that we learn in the various branches that can be applied to gaining success in the business world so having said that also talking with a friend of mine last week he has yeah he is putting me in touch with a couple of veterans who have become very successful in their civilian careers and and they're going to come and talk about how what they learned in the military uh help them
1:50 achieve that success and so we can we'll look forward to that in the meantime we started last week talking about how the cons the fundamental principles in Marine Corps Doctrine on war fighting can be used in order to develop a successful plan for starting and running a business and so we're to continue with that this week this this is part of what will end up being a four-week series altogether there's eight principles we'll cover two a week and so let me go ahead and and share my screen
2:26 so we can start this off oh and there we go share and let's see where's um slideshow here we go okay so so this this is um this is the same presentation I used last week although I I've updated it a little bit and here let me move this over here so it looks like I'm looking at you and um uh this is the show so um as as always I I reference the three pillars of attainment because that is really the core of everything that I
3:01 talk about on the various way to wow shows um we're dealing primarily here in the Pursuits pillar um and more specifically in the finances realm I think you will find though that these Concepts apply to many other areas uh of your life um and and all from time to time make some comments on that as we go so just real quickly reviewing from last week so these are you know fundamental principles of War fighting translated to business oops and there we go let's go
3:36 back to these so the first two that we talked about last week were Unity of effort and concentration of power or what we would probably call in the business World Resources right so um I was I was talking to a friend of mine who recently was promoted to CEO of the company she works for and and I addressed this issue of unity of effort to her um and and she couldn't have agreed more that one of the biggest problems that businesses face is a disunified effort on the part of people in the business in
4:12 terms of everybody focused on achieving the mission and the goals of the organization that that's that's a a key if not the key issue that especially senior leadership should be focused on is getting everybody on that same page everybody working toward that the accomplishment of that message mission and then concentration of power or resources so then concurrent with that is to provide people with the resources they need at the time they need it where they need it Etc so that they can be a
4:50 part of that Unity of effort right so whatever those resources are whether they're Capital whether they're people whether they're supplies of some kind whether it's knowledge of some kind whatever those resources are he is to make sure that they're concentrated Ward meeting that Unity of effort okay so those that's what we talked about last week so then this week we're going to talk about two more principles or fundamentals of of War fighting that apply to business and these are
5:25 initiative and Agility okay so let's let's take initiative first um and and so I think initiative shows up in a number of different areas within a business organization okay one of the primary areas where it's important is in building an organization where everybody in the organization feels empowered to take initiative toward the goals of the company
6:02 okay so if you look at how the Marine Corps operates starting from the time you're a Corporal you are formally given authority to take the initiative now that isn't to say that as a Corporal you're going to plan and launch a major battle campaign of course not however as a Corporal you are expected to have knowledge of your section of the battlefield and to make recommendations to people
6:40 senior to you in the chain of command as to how best to use the resources at your command in order to meet the objectives okay so as a Corporal you're not there just to take orders and move you are there to push information up as well as bring information down and and by the way even as a lance corporal you're getting prepared to do that okay so these and by the way a lance corporal is let's see in the Marine Corps Lance
7:15 corporal I believe is in E3 okay so the way the the the um uh Personnel structure in the military works is you have E1 is the lowest level of enlisted so for example in the Navy that's what's called a semen recruit in the uh Marine Corps that's a private and then an E2 is a PFC a private first class and E3 is a lance corporal and an E4 is a Corporal and the Navy and E4 is a petty officer third class so you can see in both of them at
7:50 the point where you get to E4 you are now part of formally part of the command structure or the yeah the command the leadership structure is probably a better way to put it okay and and as such you are no longer there solely to take orders by the way and and this is not universally true although it's certainly true in the Marine Corps especially in for example the Infantry private or a private first class is expected to take initiative and to convey information to leaders senior to
8:26 him on what he sees that may help them be more effective in achieving their goals their objective whatever it is for their platoon or or or their Rifle Team or whatever configuration they're in now and then there's this saying in the Marine Corps by the way it's called the Strategic Corporal that that that's that's not just a a sort of a a fun way of of talking about it they literally mean that leadership starts at that level okay and in in the Navy for
9:01 example in an aviation Squadron even a um uh well semen recruit is is not going to be in a squadron they'll be in training um Apprentice semen is in E2 so if if and you may not get to a squadron even as an E2 but as an E3 a semen right that's that's pretty much the lowest level you will it's likely you'll become a plane captain okay and a playing Captain is responsible for deciding whether an 80 million dollar jet leaves the deck of an aircraft carrier that jet by the way
9:38 could be manned by a commander an o5 okay that's a senior officer and and if that E3 decides nope we're scrubbing this launch that's it it's done the o5 cannot call the uh the launch commander and say I'm overriding the playing Captain the the launch Commander's gonna say no you're not get your plane off the Catapult and and get in here by the way and he's gonna he's gonna say what the heck are you doing you have you have no authority to do this why are you trying to override
10:14 the authority of of of your playing Captain who's there to make sure you don't die I mean literally right so so the idea is push the ability to take initiative as far down your organization as you can okay at the lowest levels you want people taking initiative to meet the goals now you of course you don't want them going off half cocked as they we say in the military of course not however you want their ideas you want
10:50 them to feel empowered to take to move on their ideas now that and that may be going to someone much more senior to them and saying hey I have this idea on how we can achieve our objectives better here's what it is what do you think okay now if it's been tried before okay and it didn't work so then sit down with the person look we we tried that before here's here's how it worked here's what the results were why do you think and in light of this information why do you think that you
11:27 might get a different result give them an opportunity don't just shut them oh we tried that before it doesn't work no that's not the right way to handle it the right way to handle it is to see maybe they have some new wrinkle on that idea that's worth giving a try so the very least you should do is sit down with them and take their ideas seriously okay you see this also in the submarine community on a submarine the co the o5 listens to everybody on the boat you only have about 110 people on the boat every single one of them is
12:04 crucial to operations whether they're a culinary Specialist or whether they're in charge of maintaining the nuclear reactor powering that boat it doesn't matter if if somebody has an idea the co and the XO are going to listen and they're going to listen seriously okay because you never know where a bright idea is going to come from now in the submarine Community most submariners are going are there nuclear qualified which means the Navy spent a million dollars training them minimum
12:40 these are bright bright people the fact that they may be young and maybe very Junior in experience in leadership is that's a factor but it doesn't mean that they're stupid or should be treated that way to the contrary they're there doing the work day in and day out they're the ones who are going to come up with in some maybe a big change but more likely an incremental change but if you get 10 incremental changes that makes your boat work better you're light years ahead
13:16 because it's typically small improvements that add up that make an organization or in this case a submarine work better okay it's and and going back to the Marine Corps it's the same thing when you've got a rifle team or a platoon that's that's a very small unit rifle team is three three people typically a platoon is is uh three rifle teams plus leaderships you're talking about I think about 12 to 15 people perhaps something like that okay these are small small units at the very beginning of the Tactical level of of military operations and yet they're the
13:52 ones that are gonna make an operation successful so they're they're on the ground their eyes are seeing what's happening and their ideas are valuable that's no different than your the employees in an organization who are in customer service or in production or in whatever it is your business is doing no matter how Junior they are no matter how new they are to the business or how low on the totem pole they are that has nothing to do with whether they can come up with good ideas and you want them to those
14:29 good ideas are gold even if they're small because again in your business incremental progress is going to mean much more than trying to make some big huge shift first of all it's hard to make big shifts in a business people are resistant to big changes but small changes are much easier to Institute and if you create a culture in your company where the most Junior people have a sense that if they take the initiative at least they'll be they'll
15:05 be heard they'll be listened to their ideas will be given due consideration you're gonna build uh you're first of all you're gonna you're yeah you're gonna build a an organization that will be able to change more rapidly which we're going to talk about next and second of all you'll be building loyalty in your organization and third you'll be building a leadership leadership succession because people will want to stay there because they'll see that they are valued as an employee and especially for younger workers that's incredibly important to them they
15:43 want to feel like what they're doing has value and if they don't they're gonna quit that's just how it is and by the way as much as we as you hear all this terrible stuff about young people today they have no commitment they have this if if you're an old guy like me how much more would you have enjoyed your career if as a young person you could go to your boss or even someone senior your boss with an idea and be sat down and said well tell me more about this you
16:18 know we tried something like this and it didn't work but maybe you've got a Twist on it that we didn't think of or we didn't try uh I want to hear you out on this because because you you may be on to something here so let's let's take some time to talk about it let's take a half an hour to talk about it whatever okay that half an hour that you spend while you may be super busy or whatever you may not be able to spend it you know right at that moment so well let's let's sit down tomorrow for half an hour let's you know go get yourself on my schedule for half an hour let's talk about this that half an hour in terms of relationship building a relationship
16:54 with that employee is incredibly valuable okay so build into your organ organization a culture of taking the initiative okay and and obviously make sure it's contextualized properly for the level the person is at okay but then reward initiative and not just monetary reward recognize the value that you place on someone taking initiative and by the way um unfortunately we don't have we don't have time for me to tell a story about my father taking initiative but when my
17:31 dad was in the Navy he he took initiative and it ended badly so badly my father thought he might get kicked out of the Navy white to the contrary though the captain of his ship sat down with him talked about Lessons Learned and then said carry on Mr bamil and my dad was shocked and he's and and the his Cecile said to him you've shown something that it's so hard for me to teach that you will take initiative and I value initiative I'm telling you I think my dad would have
18:06 sailed into a hurricane for that Captain because of of of how he handled that incident so even if if you've got an employee who takes initiative and it turns out badly well that happens sometimes okay value the initiative figure out the lessons learned and then say to the employee hey I'm glad you took initiative we learned some good things you learned some good things now next time you take initiative it can be done better than it was this time but hey good on you that that you know you
18:42 don't just sit around collecting your paycheck that you're really fired up about meeting the mission of this company okay right so that's initiative let's go on to agility I don't want to give it short shrift here agility is it is becoming ever more crucial to staying in business the reality is whatever your business is today it's unlikely that it's going to be the same five to ten years from now the business environment is changing so
19:18 rapidly how the world works is changing so rapidly we have to stay agile okay that's that it's just it is unacceptable in in the business world today to not be agile okay and and here's the reality we don't oftentimes don't know where the next challenge is going to come from right I was having this discussion with a friend of mine last night the hardest part of of life is having the humility well I
19:54 don't know if it's the hardest part let me rephrase that one of the hardest parts about life is having the humility to admit a we're not Clairvoyant and B we're going to be able to handle everything that's thrown at us not the case I I don't I don't care not not the case we're not Clairvoyant and and and we're going to get thrown curveballs and we're going to swing and we're going to miss them let's just admit that let's not be afraid to admit that to the people we're working with
20:29 that again that will do more for them in terms of creating loyalty to the company because you're recognizing I don't need you to be perfect I'm not expecting you to be perfect don't don't walk around on eggshells let's rattle a few cages now and again that's how you will instill in them the ability to be agile because you may not be able to handle every curveball that's thrown at you but your team might be able to or at least as a team you might be able to handle 95 of them and that's
21:05 fantastic right again going back to that platoon or that rifle team in the Marine Corps each of those Marines has certain a certain function within his unit together they make a very agile Force okay and it's it's the job of of the leader of the rifle team or the platoon to know okay to be agile enough and saying okay here's our objective okay this is the way we're going to meet at this time but we okay now we've got this other objective we're going to mean it
21:40 this way or gosh we're we're working toward our objective and this unexpected thing happened what do I need to shift in order to be able to continue progress without everybody getting killed that's the agility that it takes in the battlefield in order to take an objective get your people through safely okay now of course as I've said before on these shows I don't consider business an existential operation okay so we're not it's not like you know if we make the wrong
22:15 decision in business our people are going to get killed hopefully not okay and not in general certainly but still we have to be agile we have to and and the the key thing about being agile is we don't exactly know when agility is going to be necessary if we're at the point where we've come to realize we are way off of where we need to be agility is is no longer the issue okay the the issue is we haven't been agile in responding to Market forces and and demands Etc and so now we're looking at
22:52 a much more systemic problem to get the business back on track so we want to do is Empower everybody study in our organization to consistently be on the lookout for things that may be happening that may necessitate are making a shift and and like I was saying with initiative it's a lot easier to make a number of small shifts to keep on track than it is to suffer a major setback and now have to go through a major reorganization or whatever it takes to recover from that okay and because each
23:29 of your people is going to have different skills different experiences different competencies okay they have different abilities to see what may be coming at them okay they have they have different functions within your organization so so they're able to look at what they're doing and have a sense of where things may be going and especially where things may be going awry and so you want those people to not only take the initiative but to to see in terms of agility what needs to be
24:05 done and in most cases they're going to be better placed than someone more senior who doesn't have that day-to-day contact on that particular issue so that person who does is going to have um better visibility on what needs to be done in order to keep the organization moving toward its goals let me just checking time here okay we're good okay so initiative and Agility work in concept work in concert just like when we were talking about um uh last week Unity of effort and
24:41 concentration of resources they work in concert okay so does initiative and Agility agility is not going to happen at the senior level in the company strategic shifts will but agility won't that that's just like on the battlefield so if if I'm the Battalion Commander right the shifts I'm gonna make are going to be operational shifts I'm gonna be reliant on my small unit leadership to be agile in how they meet
25:20 the objectives that I'm sending down to them in terms of operationally what I need to accomplish so I'm setting the vision and I'm setting the goals on the operational level and then I'm saying to my subordinates okay here's what I need to achieve make your plans accordingly take the initiative and be agile and keep me informed so again push information up it's the same attitude we should be taking in our our business
25:56 organizations okay and by the way we may not be the business owner okay but we may be able to instill these same principles into the company we work for at least at the level that we're working okay so if we're middle management we can perhaps instill these ideals and I and then these these ideas into the people that are within our group we can value initiative among our the people we work with we can instill a
26:33 sense of agility within those people okay and if the rest of the company isn't on board with that well whatever okay but at least our department or our division will be working better as a result we should have better employee retention we should have high greater employee satisfaction etc etc okay and and by the way one of the things you see in the Marine Corps is it has very high Esprit acore the highest Esprit of core of any of the service branches one of the reasons is
27:08 because um factors like initiative and Agility are valued in the Marine Corps openly valued right the metals you see on a yeah this side that's right I'm looking at myself in the thing is the wrong side the metals you get in the Marine Corps oftentimes are a result of taking initiative if you saw my medals you would I would be able to show you the ones that I got specifically for taking initiative even as a Chaplain okay I was not on the battlefield but but still initiative
27:43 well in it when I was with the Marine Corps initiative that I took was really valued um and and and and and I could see that in a different way than it was um in in the Navy overall but similar to how it was in Naval Aviation and and submarines which are two of the communities I was involved in okay so that's what I've got for today um again we're going to continue next week with two more of the fundamentals of War fighting from Marine Corps Doctrine translated to business we're going to keep this up for another couple of weeks so that we're getting all the
28:19 fundamentals down and then we're gonna Branch out from there so I invite you to be with me every Tuesday Morning 10 30 a.m Pacific Time 1 30 p.m Eastern Time an hour in for mountain and central time we're here every Tuesday and tomorrow Wednesday is the way to wow show people making money where we take a broader look at financial success how to gain professional success how to invest well Etc that show begins at 12 30 p.m Pacific uh 3 30 p.m Eastern and again an
28:56 hour in for mountain and central time it happens every Wednesday that's an hour Today's Show is a half hour I invite you to be with us every week go to my YouTube channel there'll be a link in the show notes subscribe to my YouTube channel and that way you'll get get notifications when a news show is is starting so thank you very much for joining me today I hope you enjoyed what we talked about I hope it's valuable for you if you have ideas thoughts comments please share them on various social media or send me an email my email address it will be there in the show notes after the show posts and I look
29:31 forward to seeing you next week which leads me only to say as I sign off every show Marie darling because you made such a big difference in my life I I've been inspired to help make a difference in other people's lives you are and always will be my bell You all take care and look forward to seeing you tomorrow and every Tuesday then after that