What We Can Learn From the Organizational Cultures That Military Veterans Create

When most people think about military leaders, their minds go straight to ridiculously strict, regimented, and intimidating TV and movie characters. Couple that with the fact that most people don’t have close ties to someone in the military, and it’s not surprising that many assume that life in the military is one big “Basic Training” shouting fest.

But through my military and business experience, I’ve seen that this stereotype is depressingly inaccurate.

The military certainly delivers a highly structured environment that doesn’t appeal to everyone, but that structure creates building blocks for many individuals to thrive. This deeply values-based foundation leads many veterans to gravitate toward leadership roles and entrepreneurship in civilian life.

From the behemoths like Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, and General Motors to newer startups like ID.me and RideScout, veterans have been a driving force behind the success of our nation both on the field of battle and in the boardroom for as long as our nation has existed. That’s because veterans are often excellent examples of strong leaders who naturally develop great cultures and practice effective strategies — examples you would be wise to follow.

Military Values Are a Strong Foundation

To succeed in the military, you must hold integrity, service, loyalty, and hard work in high regard. These can be tough qualities to find in individuals, but the military culture fosters them. Every endeavor has high stakes, and you have to be able to trust your leaders and your team. It’s easy to grasp that individual behaviors affect others. This creates veterans who value leading by example and demonstrating these values to their teams, whether they’re in the military or in the civilian sector.

The gap between declaring values and demonstrating them is hard to close for some civilian leaders. They’ve stated ideas about what kind of cultures they want, yet they struggle to live accordingly. Many veterans, on the other hand, emerge from the military as individuals who people trust and want to follow because of the importance they put on their values.

Build Your Business Like a Veteran

In addition to the character development people experience in the military, veterans who start new businesses seem to enact common strategies. These skills and tactics aren’t necessarily directly taught in the military — they result from being put in tremendously difficult and stressful real-life situations that force military leaders to stand by what they hold dear. Even without military experience, leaders in the civilian world would benefit from infusing these veterans’ strategies into their company cultures:

Swift decision-making: Analysis paralysis generally isn’t something you see in the military. People are expected to make multiple critical decisions every day with the best information available to them at the time.

The military often gives people an enormous amount of responsibility at a very young age. In the past decade, many veterans were pushed to their limits in combat situations where they had to make extremely difficult decisions quickly.

As a young lieutenant, I remember an instructor reiterating the point to “do something.” You don’t get paid to sit paralyzed; you get paid to make things happen. You may not always make the best decisions, but you have to keep things moving. Rather than remaining frozen while waiting for more information, continue to develop the situation, gather new inputs, and shape the situation to your advantage.

Clear processes: If the U.S. military were a company, it would be the largest in the country. Millions of “employees” in all corners of the world are operating 24/7. It’s effective on a large scale because of very clear processes. New members are trained relentlessly until they become proficient, and everyone works hard to eliminate mistakes.

When veterans enter the workforce as civilians, they understand that clearly organized and communicated processes drive clarity and consistency, which also outlines clear definitions of success and failure.

Contingency planning: Veterans recognize the need to be able to make quick decisions when things begin to unravel. They know all too well that even the best plans tend to get derailed by the bad guys. There’s a saying in the military that “no plan lasts past the first shot.”

The SEAL Team Six members who took out Osama bin Laden didn’t expect one of their aircrafts to crash during their insertion, but when it did, they didn’t let it stop them. Contingency plans went into effect, and the operation was executed with precision. In your work, stay focused on your goals, and don’t let disruptions ruin your whole operation.

Continuous learning: After every single training event — and there are a lot of them in the military — the entire team conducts an after-action review, which is a structured and detailed review of what happened. This process is absolutely essential to helping the team improve local processes. This focus on continuous learning and improvement reduces future mistakes and creates effective and efficient processes.

Humility: This is both a character trait and an effective strategy. Most veterans I know carry out their work with quiet efficiency. They view their role as serving others, and they don’t typically expect recognition for what they do.

Many people in the business world desire fame and fortune to accompany their success, but veterans understand that their work isn’t only for their benefit. They recognize that they’re a part of something bigger. Humble leaders are much more enjoyable to work with, and their eagerness to let others take credit for hard work helps develop positive cultures.

The military world is foreign to many civilians, but ignorance and fear of false stereotypes may be causing some to miss out on incredible learning opportunities. You may not have saved someone’s life in battle, but if you lead like a veteran, you can improve lives and your company culture.

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