One of Life's Transitions

I had a conversation recently about my transition from military to civilian life.  The discussion covered not only the differences I had to adjust to, but also how I was able to use key lessons from my military experience as a leader and adapt and apply them productively to benefit my career and the civilian businesses I’ve worked for.  Since these lessons have broader applications, I am giving you a condensed account of them here.

 When I left the military, where I had been a commander and leader for over twenty years, I found myself in a very different world.  Everyone did not share the same expectations, discipline and work style and I was no longer responsible for other people.  A lot was expected of me but the only things I was responsible for were my desk and me.  It was a big change.  Having a friend who had been in the military as my supervisor and a few former military service people on my team helped ease the transition.  At first, I liked the freedom but after a few years, I began to crave the responsibility and leadership I had found in the military.  As it turned out, the same skills and abilities I had developed in the military contributed both to my ability to adapt to civilian life and to resume a position of leadership within a few years.

Service

One of the key lessons I brought home from my military experience was a commitment to service.  This was a very important element in my ability to lead, inspire and mobilize others.  A sixth generation member of the military, my commitment to service was strengthened and honed by military experience, both through serving my country and helping those I commanded develop professionally and personally through the programs I instituted and direct personal action to resolve problems.

Leading service men and women, sometimes 350 of them, I was inescapably involved with all aspects of their lives.  When I was a platoon leader in Germany, I used to make a habit of dropping in on members of my team at home unexpectedly to make sure things were all right with them.  I remember dropping in on one soldier, who had his whole family with him and whose low pay made it hard to make ends meet.  When I arrived, I heard a baby cry-from hunger.  We resolved the situation through getting them the assistance they needed and helping them plan.

After that, we made it a habit to regularly round up unit families on the base and take them to the mess hall to eat, even when this was not standard procedure.  Similarly, I instituted programs to deal with alcoholism and gave service members one chance to straighten out that problem, rather than just kicking them out with a dishonorable discharge.  What I brought back from this was an ability and desire to lead and inspire a team to a high level of excellence by developing their ability as individuals and as members of a team, to overcome whatever challenges they faced.

When I returned from the military, my commitment to service continued.  It is my conviction that a major part of leadership is mentoring and helping others develop.  For that reason, I was on the leadership development committee at BB&T, have mentored junior colleagues informally throughout my career, have been a Boy Scout leader and belong to the Rotary Club.

Strategic Planning

A second skill I brought back from the military was the ability to teach others how to plan strategically to achieve goals by following eight essential steps starting from the definition of the goal, through evaluating competing strategic approaches and ending with taking the steps to achieve those goals within the desired time frame.  The first person outside of the military I taught this approach to was my eleven year old son, who went on to earn the Eagle Scout rank by applying these principles in developing and executing a plan to pave a driveway perfectly within the time he’d calculated.  He was justifiably proud of the accomplishment, as I was of him.  Of course, I went on to share this skill with others in the teams and businesses I led, which contributed significantly to our successes.  However, his success is the one I enjoyed the most.

Stamina, Discipline and Focus

As a leader, responsible for soldiers’ lives, I learned how to work 20 hours a day dealing with everything from training to logistics to the development and nurturing of members of my team, to include their families when appropriate.  I developed a discipline and focus in resolving complex problems and dealing with the unexpected that have served me extremely well in civilian life.  To cite just one example, I only have to go back to the 9/11 event.

This event will be a seminal event for my generation as well as my son’s generation (Millennial).  My team was managing nearly $2 Billion in assets at American Express and clearly we were affected by the closure of the stock market for a week not to mention the turmoil that followed after they (the markets) were opened a week later on 9/17.  We spent the five or so days following 9/11 studying history, consumer sentiment, and market behavior in an attempt to prepare ourselves for the tumult that we were sure was going to occur on the opening day.  Many of those around us took a short vacation seeing as how they had nothing to do since the markets were closed.  We stayed the course, exercising discipline and focus. 

Stamina was also important because the enormity of the events in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania creeped in whenever you let your guard down.  When the markets finally opened, we were not immune to the downdraft but were well prepared to take advantage of the markets' violent swings over the coming weeks.  So much so, we had very good investment performance for the 4th quarter and actually for the year.  Our clients were happy and we were profitable despite the horror and national pain.  Clear thinking, planning, and having clear-cut goals and objectives combined with stamina, discipline and focus carried the day.

Loyalty

Loyalty to your group and above all to your mission is an ingrained part of being in the military.  I translated that into loyalty to the organization I work for and its mission when I moved to the civilian sector.  This has been the keystone of everything I do and perhaps the most important element of my success.

Flexibility

Perhaps surprisingly for some readers, I also learned the importance of flexibility and being able to work from the bottom up through my military experience.  Part of this came from the military’s habit of alternating periods when you are in command with periods when you are a staff member-which develops the ability to look at challenges from different points of view.  Another part came from skills I developed when working with streetwise supervisors, who put me in situations where I had to develop personal relationships with people in charge of different parts of an operation in order to succeed.  Those assignments taught me how to solve problems by getting to know people across units and divisions, in order to work to support their goals and needs to accomplish the larger mission.

Reflecting on all of this now, I see there were was a definite period of adaption when I returned to civilian life, with some bumpy moments.  However, it is clear to me that my military service is both an inextricable part of who I am as a man and has contributed greatly to who I am as a business leader and a conceptual and strategic thinker.