If Bill Clinton had had this lecture, he wouldn’t have needed to risk the freedom of Sandy Berger….

We know Sandy accidentally stuffed his pants and socks with National secrets, just before the 9-11 Hearings. When I saw this quoted email from Buzz Patterson, author of “Dereliction of Duty” (a fine read, by the way), and Buzz’s remarks about it wasn’t about the documents themselves, but the handwritten notes on the margins. He is so correct. We can only surmise why the followers of Clinton didn’t want that on the street.

It was back in 1987, and we had returned from a major fleet exercise a few days before. While we had been at sea, there was a change of command, and the incoming commodore of our destroyer squadron was Capt Joe Lopez. It was our first time back in the office (somewhere we didn’t get to visit very often) and he walked out of his office, holding a naval message in his hand. Since we were still feeling him out, and he us, it got quiet.

What Joe Lopez said next has stuck with me since that day. It went something like this:

“Gentlemen, we may make our jokes and derogatory comments about the units we work with at times, but those things should be kept among us.” He held the message up facing us, and there were some handwritten remarks in the margins. He didn’t tell us what it was, but in this context, that wasn’t important.

“We have people from our units and other places that come in here regularly to meet with us. How would you feel if you walked in here, as one of the ship’s company of a unit of ours, and saw something about your ship written on a message sitting on one of the desks in here?”

“If something needs to be written on a document, make it factual and professional. That way, you’ll never be called upon to explain something you regret writing.”

He didn’t have to say any more, the point was quickly grasped.

As Engineer Officer in a surface ship, the maintenance and operation of the ships gyroscopes fell under my purview. We were in the South Atlantic Ocean, operating with one of the South American navies for a surface gunnery exercise.

The Weapons Officer was having a bad day, as the fall of shot from our main guns (5
“/54 caliber) wasn’t landing near the towed target. The CO, being the warfighter he was, as well as being a gunnery expert, asked Weps what the problem was. Reportedly, without much hesitation, he proclaimed the signal amplifiers for the gyros weren’t operating properly and therefore, the gun orders from the fire control system was off.

Gee, thanks, John, is really all I could think about as Captain Maxiner chewed on me about equipment not operating to specs. I called Ensign Hale and got him to work running checks. After a few hours, Nolan came back, showing me the sync amp outputs were all within specifications. I reported this to the Captain. What I found out later that day was that while we were scratching our heads and checking the gyros, the fire control division had been madly swapping out circuit cards in the MK 86 Gunfire Control System. If my sync amps were the problem, it was odd that they would be doing this kind of work on their system, particularly if you didn’t know where the problem was.

It turned out Weps hosed me, but I did get a dig in a few days later when we were doing another gunnery shoot. I wandered up to the bridge, and stood behind the Co and Weps, as the guns pounded out round after round and got calls back over the radio from the tug that was towing the target sled of “Alpha Mike” over and over. “AM” is the report that the round hit within close enough proximity to the target sled that it would have been a direct hit on a real ship.

I waited for several of the reports of success to come over the radio, then, when there was a lull in the firing, said loudly “Those sync amps sure are shooting good!” All I got was two hard, cold stares from the Captain and the Weapons Officer. All I could do was stand there and smile.

One small victory for the Engineering Department was racked up that day.

Part XII – “Red Blood or Red Ink”

Index to the Series:
Part I: Initiative, marketing, sales, project planning and program management skills
Part II: Auditing Skills
Part III: Operations 24/7/365
Part IV: “Point Papers”
Part V: Collateral Duties
Part VI: The “Git ‘er done!” Factor
Part VII: “Total Care”
Part VIII: Communications in the Workplace
Part IX: “Give a smart person with potential a chance”
Part X: Process Engineering, Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, Total Quality Leadership, or what ever you call it. The bottom line title: Making “it” better
Part XI: The Military’s Supply System
Part XII: “Red Blood or Red Ink”
Part XIII: Constructive Plagiarism

This is probably an original way to portray what I’ll comment on below. It’s been running around in my head for a few years now, and this seems to be the right time to roll it out.

Think jeopardy. What’s the difference between warfare and business? Bingo. One is a more gentile form of the other, but in each case, the goal is to take something from the other party, and make it yours. What’s the difference between Wal-Mart moving in, with the local hardware, toy and grocery stores taking a significant, if not financially fatal “hit,” and Hitler moving into Poland? I think you can’t argue that there is a fundamental difference here.

It’s all about competition. It’s about figuring out your enemy/competitor’s weakness and exploiting it to your gain. Certainly one venue is far more radical, and in many cases, far more final. Particularly for those service members who have been able to attend one of the National or international service colleges, this is a daily exercised skill, and therefore, a part of their thought processes.

The curriculums of the war colleges focus on building better warfighters, at the upper levels. The degrees awarded are in the Strategic Studies arena at the Master’s level. The almost universally studied texts is “On War” by Carl von Clausewitz. The other classic is “The Ancient Art of War” by Sun Tzu. These writings are studies in how people operate in the most extreme climes of competition, that of armed conflict.

Reduce this to the business environment and what you have is people who subconsciously know what to look for when you ask them to figure out how to increase market share, or how to take over, or penetrate a market. To them, it’s just second nature to mentally construct an operational concept, that will form the “battle plan.”

Not only will they formulate the concept, they will have had practice in drafting the operational plan and then communicating it to the office/sales force staff.

Think about it. How many business seminars have you been to where some tremendously successful business person stand before you and they reference some great philosophy that is directly derived from a great warrior? Why shouldn’t they, it’s the same concept at work.

Part XI – The Military’s Supply System

Index to the Series:
Part I: Initiative, marketing, sales, project planning and program management skills
Part II: Auditing Skills
Part III: Operations 24/7/365
Part IV: “Point Papers”
Part V: Collateral Duties
Part VI: The “Git ‘er done!” Factor
Part VII: “Total Care”
Part VIII: Communications in the Workplace
Part IX: “Give a smart person with potential a chance”
Part X: Process Engineering, Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, Total Quality Leadership, or what ever you call it. The bottom line title: Making “it” better
Part XI: The Military’s Supply System
Part XII: “Red Blood or Red Ink”
Part XIII: Constructive Plagiarism

For most non-commissioned officers and above, pretty much everyone on on the ship had to interact with the supply system in detail. I have good and bad sea stories regarding the actual supply officers I worked with, but for the most part, while we didn’t like the thought that they didn’t have watches to stand at sea, they were a professional bunch, with only a few radical bean counters in the bunch.

If you needed something, there were ways to look up exactly what it was, and then a form to order it with. While it seemed like a pain in the butt for a pad of paper, it was pretty handy when you turbine front frame attached gear box failed, and you needed another one in order to put that engine back in service.

We all learned it wasn’t a wild, wild west out there, with easy access to the storerooms, but a structured system, which accounted for useage and made sure the next one got on order to be able to keep the authorized spares in place.

My point is that military person in front of you understands the need for a large, seemingly cumbersome logistics network, and how, in fact, it really does make life easier.

The requisition form goes to the supply petty officer, he logs it in the division’s records and it begins it’s journey to the chain of command. The chief or leading petty officer usually has a grasp on the budget and knows if it’s a go or not, so they can justify it to the division officer, if it’s not a part of the planned, budgeted process.

You won’t need much to educate an ex-military person about your system, because the basic concepts and operation are already a part of what they have done. Show them the forms and tell them were to go to submit them and when and where to expect a delivery.

I ended up becoming very connected to training issues in my career. In the outside world, I was a skydiving instructor for about 15 years. I always found the quickest way to get someone into the “program” was to use correct analogies, that drew on their past experiences. When you see their eyes light up in a few minutes, and they are saying words indicating they “get it,” you’re on the way and probably saved many hours of classroom time with your new employee. This post was to provide an analogy that may be useful for just this situation, when you bring someone into a large corporation, with an extensive logistics system.

YouTube has some great stuff….

Since I know the retired paycheck of a Navy Capt is not good enough to allow Neptunus Lex to have

an F/A-18 in his garage for weekend jaunts, maybe he’d be satisfied with doing what the guy in this video did….

And, oh, yeah…he already understands the management of powered flight systems, so he’ll pick it up in no time and can be down at Skydive San Diego real

soon now…

Part X – Process Engineering, Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, Total Quality Leadership, or what ever you call it. The bottom line title: Making “it” better

Index to the Series:
Part I: Initiative, marketing, sales, project planning and program management skills
Part II: Auditing Skills
Part III: Operations 24/7/365
Part IV: “Point Papers”
Part V: Collateral Duties
Part VI: The “Git ‘er done!” Factor
Part VII: “Total Care”
Part VIII: Communications in the Workplace
Part IX: “Give a smart person with potential a chance”
Part X: Process Engineering, Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, Total Quality Leadership, or what ever you call it. The bottom line title: Making “it” better
Part XI: The Military’s Supply System
Part XII download Faith of My Fathers : “Red Blood or Red Ink”
Part XIII: Constructive Plagiarism

At a mandatory briefing about getting out and working in the “real” world, the briefer said in many cases, you won’t know how to make money for you employer, but if you can show them how to save money, there is the same result on the bottom line: Financial increase.

It took the surge of the “Total Quality Leadership” (TQL) push under Admiral Kelso as Chief of Naval Operations to get me to see there was something we had already been doing for the same reason, but we didn’t know what to call it. We constantly did things with an eye towards spotting trends, so we could figure out how to do things better, or to see things coming off the tracks, by catching the trends early on. I was “exposed” to the formalized TQL methodology as a senior Lieutenant Commander, and then used the methods more effectively for the rest of my career. While getting my training in TQL, I realized processes carried out by those around me, most notably the engineers aboard ship, during my initial sea tours many years before were, in fact, the very methods discussed under TQL.

As time passed over the next several years, the culture of the Navy adopted more to the process control mentality, and much of it became almost subconscious. The great part, was even the skeptics, who thought the time involved in sitting down and looking at how things were done was a waste of time, were gradually converted, as improvements couldn’t be denied after a while.

In addition to the formal drive to make things more efficient, don’t forget the human condition of trying to get things done with the least amount of effort is a powerful force, especially in the enlisted ranks. I say that as a compliment, not in a derogatory manner, because it made the system work better. If the goal was to get it done, and the way there faster was to spend a few minutes gaming it out, so you could “hit the beach” earlier, then you could see that in action.

The fall out of all of this TQM/TQL/CI/Process Engineering experience, involving many levels of the pay structure, is it has become a way of routine business for many service members. This means you can reasonably expect these people to come to you, unafraid of figuring out how to look at systems and procedures and then consider how to make it work better. This means more efficient operations, and therefore, more $$$ in the bottom line.

Part IX – “Give a smart person with potential a chance”

Index to the Series:
Part I: Initiative, marketing, sales, project planning and program management skills
Part II: Auditing Skills
Part III: Operations 24/7/365
Part IV: “Point Papers”
Part V: Collateral Duties
Part VI: The “Git ‘er done!” Factor
Part VII: “Total Care”
Part VIII: Communications in the Workplace
Part IX: “Give a smart person with potential a chance”
Part X: Process Engineering, Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, Total Quality Leadership, or what ever you call it. The bottom line title: Making “it” better
Part XI: The Military’s Supply System
Part XII download Faith of My Fathers : “Red Blood or Red Ink”
Part XIII: Constructive Plagiarism

This post can be best categorized by calling it “Give a smart person with potential a chance.”

This part of the series is a little bit of the reverse side of the equation. It’s a topic that I think merits being brought forward and it’s about how the military’s hiring system has a specific method of recruiting to other major corporations. It might do well for the civilian sector to consider this.

My experience is that there are few places, outside of the military and military contractors, that take more than a passing consideration in hiring someone who doesn’t hold the specific “tickets” for a position. After leaving the military and working for a two contractors, I went out and tried to run my own business for a while. I realized I needed to head back into the work force, and as a result, I applied to many jobs that I had the hands on experience to fill. Since I had a degree in hard science, and not engineering or computers, I didn’t get the phone calls. Since then, I have found two good friends who have been recruiters for years and they confirmed my suspicions. If I didn’t have the degrees, I wasn’t going to get a call. I had lots of hands on, in and out of the military, but that didn’t count.

Consider this: The US Military is one of the few places that looks at the potential of people and, based on their aptitude at fundamental skills, they are then accepted and trained. In industry, it’s basically if you haven’t got the experience, you can’t play. It’s a catch 22 for people trying to enter a new field, either for a first time job, or to change career fields. I suspect a lot of great people never get where they can do the most good, because they didn’t have some diploma from a recognized school. I don’t mean employers should wantonly accept anyone, but it may be prudent to consider those who have spent the time doing the work, without the benefit of schooling, and who are successful, for filling some positions.

Another story from my effort at being a headhunter involves the story of a major bank, that relented and let a Marine Major join the company. In short order, they were amazed at how productive he was. In addition, his calm demeanor, in what was perceived as chaos to the bank employees, was noted. Think about it: After being trained as a Marine, what can possibly be a chaos anymore? They wanted more like him, having seen a glimpse of what an ex-service member could do, even without the “training.”

The ASVAB battery of tests, and the AFQT exams are some of the basic skills tests the military uses. The ASVAB is for general skills, and the AFQT is for fitness to be accepted into a flying billet. From tests like this, many people have successfully performed incredibly complex duties, under incredibly difficult circumstances. Granted, the military also has an extremely well developed training capability, in order that those with the aptitude can then be provided with the actual specific skills necessary. This overhead of the training commands is a large expense, but it is a proven process.

It boggles the mind to realize many of these young people who get through this would probably be rejected by major corporations, for a lack of capability, due to not having the experience.

Think about it, potential employer, can you ask some questions that prove a basic aptitude for the position, and also to assess the ability of that person to absorb the information? If you can do that, you may just find an enthusiastic employee, that a few years down the road, has proven themselves to be able to outperform that person who showed up with only the certificate saying they knew something, but had no other life experience.

Part VIII – Communications in the Workplace

Index to the Series:
Part I: Initiative, marketing, sales, project planning and program management skills
Part II: Auditing Skills
Part III: Operations 24/7/365
Part IV: “Point Papers”
Part V: Collateral Duties
Part VI: The “Git ‘er done!” Factor
Part VII: “Total Care”
Part VIII: Communications in the Workplace
Part IX: “Give a smart person with potential a chance”
Part X: Process Engineering, Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, Total Quality Leadership, or what ever you call it. The bottom line title: Making “it” better
Part XI: The Military’s Supply System
Part XII download Faith of My Fathers : “Red Blood or Red Ink”
Part XIII: Constructive Plagiarism

Communications in the Workplace is the topic of this post. The military engenders a different sort of work communications ethic. In any service, in any place, there is an undercurrent, unspoken, yet allowed for, that at any moment, any one may not be there to pull their share of the work load. Most people will not leave a unit due to a medical casualty, but they all will leave. Whether it is at the end of active obligated service (EAOS), or to transfer to another unit, people will come and go. The reason this work ethic is different, is the essential need for the unit to continue its mission with greatest efficiency, regardless of who is there, or not.

Side note: At one level, it’s a pretty interesting system that can plan out a year or so in advance, as to who will be where, what training they may receive (or not) enroute to join a unit, and also, a similar time out, who is being replaced. More often than not, this is the normal cycle of events.

Subconsciously for many units, but most importantly the ones directly linked to potential combat service, the loss of a person, whether a leader or a junior team member, there is the understanding the change may take place in the blink of an eye. The people one step up and one step down from that person need to be able to fill the gap and make things happen.

What this does is give service members a work ethic of keeping things organized, and keeping the people around them “briefed in” as to what they do, where the files are, who to call in this and that situation, etc, etc, etc. This mindset, is very necessary for the survival of the unit. It differs from the civilian workplace. It keeps a unit up to speed, which translates into efficiency in pretty much anything they do.

But.it exposes to the people around you how you get the job done. In the outside world, this mode of operation seems that is a scary thing. If you let someone around you know the real detail of your job on the “outside,” you take the risk of them being able to show they can perform your job, and therefore, make a pitch to management to move you along the path, which may take you to the door. Personally, I don’t think that ends up being as fun in execution, as it sounds. You send a knowledgeable person packing, and guess who gets to take up the slack?

While your ex-military people may seem like they want to find out too much, its merely that defensive mechanism showing up, that allowed units to be so successful. Keeping your staff “briefed in” on the business of the business makes them more efficient.

The lessons of this was taught to me most clearly when I worked for Captain Pete Bulkeley. Pete was the son of Admiral Bulkeley, who, as a young Lieutenant, took General MacArthur out of the Philippines on his PT boat in 1942. His nickname was the Sea Wolf. Quite a man, who served the Navy for many years, even after retirement, but that’s another story for another post.

Anyhow, I was assigned to a mobile training team unit, and well we were pretty well staffed, and on shore duty, I might add, we mostly all lived out of a suitcase, traveling the east coast almost weekly to train the surface ships. It wasn’t unusual for one of the administrative staff to come down the hall, and say “The Captain is having a meeting” several times a week. I “disliked” those meeting, when we sat around the table, the senior representative from each department and he’d ask each one of us: “What’s going on?” We’d layout what our department was up to and he’d go to the next person. At the end, he might issue a few directions, but generally, that was all we did. I’d be happy to get back to the work at hand, but it wasn’t until after he transferred, and the new officer-in-charge came, that I captured the meaning of his many times a week interruption to our busy days, when we managed to get to the office. The next OIC wasn’t as communicative, but we still kept the organization going.

What Pete’s meetings did for us was to allow us to get on the phone, responding to a call from our “customers” (read ship commanding officers, department heads, and senior enlisted in most cases, or the staff personnel from the head of the surface forces for the Atlantic Fleet, whom we did our training and inspections for), and we could pretty well coherently answer their questions of scheduling and training initiatives in the works, because Pete had made us sit around the table and communicate that information to each other, when I assumed it was for him. It certainly was, but it had a broader audience.

That is a snap shot of what is bred into all levels of the chain of command, to one degree or another. I always despised the voice at the other end of the phone telling me “They aren’t here right now, but they’ll be back next week.” We didn’t try to assume the authority of the other departments, but since most of us were in and out, we certainly could represent them at a moderate level of detail, and then we could determine how important it may be that we tracked them down, if something was that important. I have come to gauge the organizational skills of a company by how well they can handle a call, when the specific person isn’t around to help you, viewed through the filter of the discussion above.

Part VII – “Total Care”

Index to the Series:
Part I: Initiative, marketing, sales, project planning and program management skills
Part II: Auditing Skills
Part III: Operations 24/7/365
Part IV: “Point Papers”
Part V: Collateral Duties
Part VI: The “Git ‘er done!” Factor
Part VII: “Total Care”
Part VIII: Communications in the Workplace
Part IX: “Give a smart person with potential a chance”
Part X: Process Engineering, Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, Total Quality Leadership, or what ever you call it. The bottom line title: Making “it” better
Part XI: The Military’s Supply System
Part XII: “Red Blood or Red Ink”
Part XIII: Constructive Plagiarism

“Total Care:” The concept is when you have a military unit, leadership at all levels requires “total care” of those assigned under you. Most every aspect of their lives are now a responsibility of the leaders. Whether it’s a fire team leader, a platoon leader, battalion commander, or the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, everyone in your “down line” is your responsibility.

I suspect the top level of this concept isn’t lost on most employers, but for those without any military experience, much of the subtlety can be missed. As a result of the need to have this person ready to work 24/7, the “system” has a complete care system that completely outclasses any human resources department you might imagine in the civilian sector. The difference is there are few dedicated “human resource” professionals in the loop. Much of what is required is part and parcel of what a military leader is required to do.

What this means if any service member who has had any responsibility, in combat or not, will have a broader view of what a managerial position requires. We ensured routine wellness checks were done, that teeth were cleaned, that training was scheduled and held, that administrative records, documenting professional performance were properly entered in formal records, the right gear was packed, that families were prepared legally and logistically, for time to be spent apart, that single members personal belongings were stowed safely away, that financial arrangements were completed to ensure money went to the right banks, that life insurance forms reflected the proper beneficiaries, etc, etc, etc.

On a daily basis, this may not have much effect, but you can bet these people, in management, will be more in tune with HR programs, which makes for a better cared for work force, and therefore happier employees.

Part VI – The “Git ‘er done!” Factor

Index to the Series:
Part I: Initiative, marketing, sales, project planning and program management skills
Part II: Auditing Skills
Part III: Operations 24/7/365
Part IV: “Point Papers”
Part V: Collateral Duties
Part VI: The “Git ‘er done!” Factor
Part VII: “Total Care”
Part VIII: Communications in the Workplace
Part IX: “Give a smart person with potential a chance”
Part X: Process Engineering, Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, Total Quality Leadership, or what ever you call it. The bottom line title: Making “it” better
Part XI: The Military’s Supply System
Part XII download Faith of My Fathers : “Red Blood or Red Ink”
Part XIII: Constructive Plagiarism

This segment is what I can best describe using some blue collar comedy. Let’s call it the “Git ‘er done!” factor.

Well, it’s not a union shop and the following of orders is inbred, sometimes willingly, other times with a modicum of “persuasion.” Commanders, and other “line” supervisors get pretty used to slinging around direction to handle what ever comes up. I don’t say this in a negative way, just that it’s a fact. Since that’s the case, the majority of the troops will give a cheery “aye, aye!” and proceed to make things happen. The cheery is not required, and sometimes, the response from the newly assigned is not so cheery, but they manage to get it done anyhow.

What this breeds in the service members is highly refined process of expending the least amount of energy to achieve the required results. This is necessary, because there are already many more things to be done than there is time for, so this is necessary to retain sanity. Time constraints tend to be a factor, so that’s factored into the equation by the person doing the work.

The outgrowths of this are enhanced degrees of initiative, innovation and priority assignment, all great compliments to almost any job assignment. Also, I need to highlight that this may also allow the development of the Tom Sawyer like ability to informally delegate the newly acquired tasks to someone else.

Watching the youth of our country slice into the center of a major country in a few short weeks demonstrated this skill. They proved their problem solving ability, added to innovation, and being given the latitude by their commanders to exercise initiative is very must alive, well, and subconsciously exercised in extremely intense and time critical circumstances.

These young people have been on the news nightly for going on three years now. I submit they can quickly figure out most things and figure out how to “git ‘er done” for any employer, as well.