Veteran Lesson I: Know Your Worth (Ten Veteran Lessons for Every Day)

Topic: Leadership

        When I separated from the military, I immediately transitioned to a job in the Oil and Gas industry in Houston, Texas.  This company had a knack for grabbing up transitioning veterans, teaching them the ins and outs of the industry, and letting them bolt off to greener pastures when the valuable gained experience warranted more lucrative job offers. 

I was settling in nicely in my second year with the company, having been placed in charge of increasingly valuable accounts, when commodity prices tanked.  The importance of my accounts allowed me to survive the first few rounds of layoffs, but I eventually succumbed in mid-Summer 2015, just one week before my son was born.  I was forced to sink or swim.  I was not unemployed for long and found a job I was poorly suited for in less than two months.  I left that position for another in less than two months, floating aimlessly to the next best thing.

I found job searching to be a miserable undertaking.  Applying online with hundreds of other candidates leaves little statistical chance your resume will catch anyone’s eyes, let alone a hiring manager.  I remember seeing jobs I would excel in, only to be prohibited from even applying because of arbitrary experience qualifications.  Commons questions in my head went like, “You mean to tell me I’ve developed an intelligence operation from near scratch in a remote part of a war-torn country, but I’m not qualified to be a project manager for Academy Sports + Outdoors because I don’t have two years of experience monitoring loading docks?”

48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller is a must read.  It transformed my perspective on work, and the satisfaction, or lack thereof, that comes with each new venture.  Miller contends that work you love combines your skills and abilities, personality tendencies, and values, passions, and desires.  While income is important, many work themselves into depression and despair by chasing only the next highest salary.  We truly thrive when we are employed in things that combine our core values and beliefs.

After another layoff, this time a result of a failed merger of two hospital chains, a stroke of good fortune landed me in my best position since separating from the Army.  I became a salesman in the Transportation industry, in charge of selling a vehicle detection platform to city and state governments throughout my territory, which eventually grew from two states to encompass all North America.  It engaged my strategic planning abilities and allowed me to burn off my endless energy by crisscrossing the nation in pursuit of new customers.  It was at this point, more than four years past my departure from the military, that I began to see the skills formed in my six years of service as an officer.

I began to realize that all officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) are tailor-made project managers.  This is not to exclude junior enlisted soldiers, but specifically, officers and NCOs are immersed in dealing with adversity in nearly every operation, whether in a combat environment or at home in peacetime.  In combat, every single operation includes an entanglement of operations, administrative, communications, intelligence, logistics, and public affairs considerations.  In practice, an intelligence officer has unique responsibility in the operational planning process to advise on all matters of intelligence, namely enemy composition, weaponry, and capabilities, weather effects, and terrain.  When recommending a course of action based on predicted enemy activity, the intelligence officer considers constraints to the operation from all other perspectives.  For instance, inability to provide logistical support to soldiers in an operations area over an extended period may hasten the timeline for friendly operations, thus having an impact on the enemy capabilities to detect and defeat friendly forces in a prolonged mission.  Poor weather or illumination may prohibit air support to ground forces but will also impact the enemy’s ability to see our soldiers.  All these considerations are intertwined.

Realizing these things, my resumes developed a flavor for experiences and accomplishments instead of standard listings of job duties and tasks.  It was an automatic disqualifier for some jobs with two-dimensional thinkers for recruiters or hiring managers, but a conversation starter for others.  I learned to unleash my experience in a world starved for authentic forms of leadership.  I recognized veterans floundering in boring 9-to-5 jobs, and others thriving in difficult challenges that often left them on a proverbial island by themselves, with freedom to sink or swim depending on how much effort and strategy went into day-to-day operations.

Military leaders are forced to accomplish more with less.  In my own case, I was a First Lieutenant when I deployed to Afghanistan just months before my father’s death.  I was not afforded a gentle learning curve underneath the tutelage of my supervisor, a Captain with just one more year of service than I had.  We landed in a dusty rockpile known as Shindand Airfield, an old Soviet airbase built in the 1960s, dilapidated and overrun with less than trustworthy locals in a year infamous for assassinations of coalition forces on base.  My NCO in charge, a Staff Sergeant with prior experience in the infantry, broke me down over a period of six months and sharpened my soldiering skills.  I went from making one mistake after another to being relied upon to produce what became the most widely disseminated intelligence summary in Western Afghanistan, four provinces collectively known as Regional Command-West, an area the size of the U.S. State of Georgia.

As 1st Lieutenant, on aerial reconnaissance in Farah, Afghanistan

We were not permitted to complain or make excuses.  Picking up where the previous Task Force left off in an abbreviated deployment, the sergeant and I worked back-to-back, covering 24 hours, waiting weeks for a junior sergeant to arrive.  Our Task Force was allotted eight personnel, and for three months, we made the operation work with just three.  We overcame a rocky start with an underwhelming intelligence picture.  When I returned from my father’s funeral service, our Captain had arrived in country, and the section began to gel, even though we never reach our full allotment of personnel.  By the time we handed off operations to a new unit from Fort Hood, our intelligence summary was widely recognized as invaluable for planning and operations regionally.

Experiences like that are not easily gained in an office environment.  Considering the time, energy, failure, and difficulty going into such a life experience, imagine how frustrating it is to be denied for jobs due to arbitrary “experience” demands, when your existing experiences defining your character and competency are impeccable and suitable for success in nearly any field?  Resiliency is more important than accomplishing generic tasks.  Military leaders are often forced to function with fewer personnel, less money, less equipment, less ammunition, and less money than is needed for the mission, but aren’t given room to make excuses or to decline the mission.

These realizations helped me approach my sales job with a new hunger to succeed and outperform my peers and competitors.  I could run harder and push more strategically than others when I put my mind to it, making one extra meeting per week turn into five extra per month, and perhaps one or two additional sales per month that I would not have made had I not hustled and improvised.  I leveraged buddy passes on airlines to get around company travel restrictions to see customers during the COVID-ruined 2020 year.  I created solutions for customers without being asked, knowing from my own research what their initial purchasing limitations were to at least get them to try my company’s products.  Packaged together, my experiences under hardship, shortages, and occasional duress shaped my character and professional offering far more than checking off database entries, meetings conducted, and expenses approved.

The intent of this series is not to tell military stories and push veterans over non-veterans, though I will never shy away from making the case to hire veterans.  The intent is to relay lessons from military service that can be readily applied by all people.  This first lesson is critical to understanding your vocational worth, whether part of or apart from corporate America.  Jim Collins refers to this mindset of selecting quality and talent to build organizations over the standard task-doers and individuals with generic appeal in his book Good to Great.  The best organizations determine a desired end state and select those with the innate character, resolve, tenacity, drive, and skill and get them on the “bus,” and begin driving to the desired goal.  They can move the talent around because it is adaptable and able to overcome hurdles, whereas inflexible, unbroadened potential team members snap under pressure when forced to sink or swim.

If you are looking to distinguish yourself positively, you must be unafraid to stand out.  In a field of 400 candidates applying for a single position online, with internal referrals already advanced, and still others in direct communication with the hiring manager, being noticed by a recruiter becomes a task that is next to impossible.  When I began to lead my personal elevator pitch with “Ask me how I found the Taliban,” or “Let me tell you about delivering custom strategy for Major League ballplayers,” I drew focused attention on the skills I possess that distinguish me from others. 

Likewise, your successful career, start-up business, or personal branding experience will hinge on your ability to recognize and successfully communicate your unique personal accomplishments, values, and vision for the future.  If you are lost at sea with thousands of others because you are unable to tap into your personal reservoir of experiences and accomplishments under pressure, you will find it difficult to be noticed.  I maintain that a person reaches full potential when they combine what they are naturally great at with the things they care about the most.  Normally, this belief is expressed in political settings in front of audiences desiring to restore lost liberties and freedoms in America; however, it can be applied in business, philanthropy, or public service.  Our nation would benefit tremendously from authentic elected officials with a motivating and inspiring story to tell, rather than convincing the public they are fit for office either by incumbency, years of experience, or birthright.

Know your worth.  You were created with a purpose, filled with your personality traits, shaped in perspective by your experiences, driven forward by accomplishment under fire, and capable of achieving much more than the world convinces you of.  Dare to be different, to set yourself apart with your stories of accomplishment, and even failure.  Your mistakes, properly recognized and remedied, are essential to your story.  They motivate others to recognize their own shortcomings, and drive them to better themselves, and in doing so, become indispensable members of a successful team.