Leadership after the Marines
Untrained Leadership & Undisciplined People
The contrast between the leadership standards and abilities instilled into US Marines compared to what I experienced afterwards and over the next 30 years in the world of public organizations and private business is still alarming and unsatisfactory.
I served with hundreds of 20-year-old kids in the US Marine Corps who displayed more command presence, decisiveness and leadership ability than many of the senior career business leaders that I met over my lifetime.
I came to realize and understand quickly that most people are untrained and undisciplined in the basic skills and responsibilities of their own lives, jobs, and roles, much less in the theories and disciplines of effectively leading people.
Understanding the Problem
I also came to realize that none of these people woke up one day and decided to be a bad leader. They just weren’t properly trained. They were surviving at best.
For many of them, developing and influencing people to achieve business objectives, or any goals for that matter, theirs or anyone else’s, was impossible, and excruciating to watch and behold.
Understanding the problem made the solution simple and obvious. Train and develop the people around me. It was time to get to know my people and find a purpose for them.
Leading Up
I began seeking likeminded leaders above and around me who would support the effort. I had to lead by example and initiative to earn their trust and influence.
I accomplished this by constantly seeking opportunities to assist them in solving their current problems. I was learning their goals and aligning myself to ANY goals that I could possibly influence or help them achieve.
I was also learning and understanding their roles, competencies, and influence in the business system and what standards and requirements they held and expected from others.
Taking Initiative: Be a Honey Badger
Know Your People and Find a Purpose for Yourself.
Sometimes, it was as simple as investigating problems for them and reporting back on my findings and what the process experts reported and recommended.
Other times, it was delegating one of their time-consuming tasks to myself for "development and training" and then finding ways to improve or automate the task for them.
This was all in addition to my core duties and responsibilities. I found time and made time. You must learn to follow before you can lead.
Overcoming Bad Leadership
Resistance from Above
Resistance from Above
Resistance from Above
Of course, some people don’t adjust well to good discipline, training, and habits. Sometimes, those people are also in leadership positions and have the authority and influence to protect themselves from accountability and responsibility.
Resistance to change is normal, especially if the person or team was previously rewarded for developing the current process or methods. Another reason for resistance is trust in the plan or its outcomes. The dumbest reason is "because that's how we've always done it."
The worst reason is fear. No one likes to be audited or told to improve. Especially those who have been hiding problems created by their own incompetence, and who are also unwilling to LEARN and meet standards.
Success is a team effort.
Bad Leaders
Resistance from Above
Resistance from Above
The worst of the bad leaders are the vindictive and cowardly people who wield extreme power and authority.
Without the ability to collaborate and influence others towards common goals, authority is just a stick or a hammer in the hand of a child who just wants their way.
Always know your value, worth, and capabilities and never tolerate bad people. Life is too short for that shit. They don't get our time or our loyalty.
They have zero integrity, do not learn from mistakes, and require swift justice.
Follow the Highest Standard and Set the Example.
Indecisiveness & Lack of Direction
Addressing the Elephant in the Room
Addressing the Elephant in the Room
But the worst leadership shortcoming is indecisiveness. This results in undefined requests, vague demands, and unclear expectations and priorities, which always lead to producing unwanted outcomes.
Leaving critical decisions to untrained and unqualified people without support, guidance, or clear expectations is stupid and lazy leadership.
Don’t allow people to lean on the excuse of not 'getting into the weeds' or details of work for their failure to provide clearly defined expectations, requirements, or supervision.
The first step in dealing with bad leadership is to address the problem tactfully and as directly as possible.
Addressing the Elephant in the Room
Addressing the Elephant in the Room
Addressing the Elephant in the Room
You can provide validation without kissing ass, and you can encourage a wayward peer or superior using genuine feedback and tact.
Encouragement is not always a formal process and can generally be accomplished through tactful conversation and gentle reminders.
Get some courage and take initiative. If they’re worth following, they’ll appreciate and respond to feedback professionally.
If not, well, now you know. Onwards and upwards always.
Be polite and professional and plan accordingly.
be a HONEY BADGEr
Take initiative and stay properly aggressive on opportunities & problems.
The US Marine Corps develops another very useful trait and skillset, INITIATIVE with a Sense of Urgency. Marines are the human equivalent of Honey badgers, and we were trained to run towards the sounds of chaos and disorder for honor, glory, and fun times.
Honey badgers are notoriously indestructible, fierce, and fearless critters. They are known to be resilient to venomous snake bites, larger animal attacks, and can overcome, and eat, about anything that gets between the Honey badger and its objective.
- Complete tasks and assignments with a sense of urgency and report on your results immediately.
- Do not start trouble but always have a good time when it happens.
- Never Quit, Never Surrender! Always improvising, adapting, and overcoming. Semper Gumby!
Be polite and professional and always compete well!
Be Polite and Professional but Have a Plan to Outperform Everyone You Meet.
Demonstrate your discipline, skills, talents, and abilities during challenges with enthusiasm and confidence.
There is no easy, just better performance through discipline, training, and habits.
Sets & Reps! Become the standard.
Compete and Play Well with Others
Everyone around you is trying to get their drawing posted on the refrigerator. Some kids will even try to tear down your work to make room for their own need for validation.
Ignore that behavior and instead provide the proper competition by always giving your best.
Good competition is healthy for the soul, and the team. Competition tests your capabilities and makes you grow and want to become better.
Remain Grateful and Humble When You Do.
Be grateful and humble. When you’re winning, keep your mouth shut. Maintain your humility because pride comes before the fall. Never adopt the “I have arrived” attitude. Be grateful for your capabilities and thankful for the opportunities to use them well.
Whether you are inheriting a team, building a new team, or being promoted within the team, you will always be on display. Learn2Lead
Become the standard, and Set the Example.
Most importantly, success is a team effort. Recognize the talents and capabilities of your people and develop a purpose for them. Find your team of misfits, get aligned, and chase after dragons and treasure.
aligning TO Simple and Clear Expectations
Establishing Simple and Clear Expectations
The next obvious consequence of undeveloped leadership was the lack of clear expectations for employees, and zero alignment on goals and priorities.
I have a simple contract with all the people I lead or serve:
- You will always receive the accolades and recognition for successful innovations and outcomes.
- I will always accept the blame and ass-chewings for mistakes or bad outcomes to our customers, partners, and bosses.
- Our mutual obligation is to make sure the ass-chewings I receive never outweigh the accolades you receive.
- We keep our promises and address issues and misunderstandings immediately and decisively.
Effective Teamwork & Capability
This agreement kept them honest and transparent with me on all issues.
Not only did this trust and loyalty prevent me from having uncomfortable conversations about issues I was not aware of, but it also allowed us to collaborate and develop plans and countermeasures before misunderstandings and misinformation about the problem and its consequences spread.
It became habit, and it made us more effective as a team, and very efficient at solving problems together.
We created a pipeline for continuously aligning and improving people, teams and leaders to better outcomes to our customers, and better performance and pay for our employees.
Following & Applying the Traits & Principles
My standard issue USMC Leadership Traits, Principles, and Creed became my compass, map, rules and purpose.
They guided me through the chaos of training untrained humans to be capable of communicating, agreeing, following orders, and working together collaboratively to accomplish team objectives.
JJ DID TIE BUCKLE (14 Leadership Traits)
Always a Good Time at the Circus
Everything is simple.
But doing it well is rarely easy.
SETS & REPS! discipline, training, and habits
Be Dedicated to Training and Influencing Everyone
Lead and Influence by eXample
The second stage of leading upwards by example was teaching everyone how to fish, and sometimes, how to make fishing poles. We needed people to help us solve their own problems.
In this stage I began using my newly gained influence to SERVE others by solving their problems. Little things like getting them an email and a computer, or a second monitor, or a radio for calling a forklift operator for materials or supplies.
They were small matters, but they made big differences for them and their quality of life at work.
Creed 1: Be dedicated to training and influencing all personnel, your peers, and leaders.
Being helpful and useful to others is an important trait and directly relates to initiative and dependability. Offering your skills, resources, and experience to others in times of need is part of being a member of a team.
This trust allowed people to be transparent about their problems and observations regarding quality, efficiency, and waste. We created believable and competent experts in every position. Their expertise and reliable feedback in this partnership ensured our continuous learning and improvement.
Build Competencies, Not Dependencies
Be helpful and useful always. Serve others but do not compromise your own duties.
When being useful and helpful, ensure that your assistance does not become a burden or distraction from performing your own duties and responsibilities.
Do not allow other people to become dependent on you to fulfill their own responsibilities.
Give a person a fish, and they’ll only eat for a day. Teach a person to fish, and they’ll eat for a lifetime. Plus, you’ll gain a new fishing buddy.
Share Rewards & Honor Commitments
I always shared the accolades.
If the plan worked out, it was their idea.
If the plan went to shit, well, then it was my problem to settle.
They felt valued and rewarded. Trust was built.
By gaining their trust and respect, I was able to influence and develop their skills and abilities in alignment with company objectives and goals. We began using common vocabulary and collaborating on where to experiment next. We were creating a learning by doing environment with the sole purpose of getting better every day, as a team.
3: Know your people and look out for their welfare
3: Know Your People
People are like a box of assorted chocolates. You never know what kind you’re going to get, or which ones are completely nuts, until you test one.
Recognize the talents and capabilities of your people and develop a purpose for them.
Don’t waste talent by overlooking it or failing to seek it out.
Get Aligned
Teams achieve goals by establishing challenging objectives and expectations, holding to performance standards, time frames, and training others to manage their own duties and tasks to standards.
Effective leadership inspires individuals to seek and take responsibility for their tasks and roles in the process to ensure the highest team performance.
Find a Place for Them
Leaders must know the skills of their personnel to the level that they can properly delegate responsibilities.
Leaders must be able to train, measure, and evaluate personnel, grasp the current situation in the process, assign and direct functions appropriately, and assist the team in learning and problem solving.
Employee Development: Creating Performance TO GOALS
Send Them on Quests
Create a learning by doing environment. Researching, experimenting, training, and testing should be focused on improving the ability and effectiveness of the individual, team, and the organization to serve its customers.
Basically, send them on small quests to test their skills at problem solving, teamwork and planning. If you throw a ball and they come back with a shoe, keep working on them. Also, find out who is missing a shoe.
Delegate Properly
We all seek and appreciate doing meaningful work for grateful people.
This is achieved by having clear direction, purpose and alignment on goals and rewards, and including the fulfilment of our hope and promise of future opportunities and rewards.
Develop people by delegating meaningful work and proper authority to them.
Have Them Teach You or Others
An effective method for developing personnel is to assign them a topic and have them teach the team on the topic.
This will teach them to research, learn, organize, and communicate their understanding in a meaningful way.
These opportunities can be quick updates on recent lessons learned. They can also be more formal lessons for training competencies or procedures.
team Performance & Merit Systems
Prepare Them
Subordinates must know and be able to perform the functions and duties of their leaders to ensure operations continue to function well when leaders are absent.
It is better to make them competent, than to protect them.
Moreover, knowing what your boss needs, when, and why will make you useful and helpful and will also prevent micromanaging from superiors.
Do Not Micromanage
Set Clear Expectations
Delegating is ordering eggs over easy, confirming the order as it is read back, and then waiting for breakfast to be delivered to your table.
Micromanaging is barging into the kitchen, demanding, “I need eggs immediately!” and then hovering in the kitchen and meddling with everyone about when to start your eggs, how to set the heat, prepare the pan, crack the eggs, when to add the salt, etc. Either get out of the kitchen and wait or go away and make your own damn eggs.
SMART Team Work
Train your team by providing challenging goals and measurable objectives.
How could we do this simpler, faster, with less waste and cost, and without losing quality or integrity? S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Develop their effectiveness at applying problem solving, planning, and continuous improvement principles.
Use the diversity of your team’s individual talents and strengths to balance weaknesses in yourself and others on the team. Take your daily SMART PILLS.
Plan, Budget & Earn Rewards
Commending comes in many forms. Wage increases, bonuses, promotions, time off, awards, training, saying thank you & good job, pizza parties, etc.
Commending with rewards should only be used when personnel and teams achieve significant goals above and beyond their expected duties and demands. Saying “thank you” should be used in all situations.
Increase their pay by setting challenging goals for developing relevant competencies and completing critical projects. Diligently assist them in their efforts for meeting goals and earning their rewards.
Partner with Your Suppliers & Customers
Learning Up
Developing partner relationships with our key suppliers was also critical to our success as a team and as a business.
We were constantly learning and experimenting with the new processes, standards and methods we learned from our considerably larger and more advanced suppliers.
Their Teams
Recognizing their profitability was reliant upon our success and growth, their teams took an active role in helping us improve the processes we used to transform their materials and products.
They offered and provided audits, training, materials and tours of their facilities and processes. We asked questions, we learned, and we applied.
At one point we were even granted access to a team of technology wizards that were authorized to assist us in solving an incredible problem.
It was simple for them.
It took longer for us to explain our problem than it did for them to solve it.
Our Teams
In those moments, we were like excited children who had just learned how to tie their own shoes. The mystery had finally been removed and was replaced with an understanding of how to perform simple repeatable steps.
We grew up a little bit more each time.
We learned, applied and tested all the critical theories and systems:
ISO 9001, TQM (total quality management), TOC (Theory of Constraints), PDCA, Lean, Six Sigma, Agile & SCRUM, ERP & MRP systems, optimization of materials and processes, batching, and cycle times to name but a few.
Our Approach
We adopted the standards, tools, and methods that worked best for our organization and each department's process needs.
As our competencies matured, we were able to become partners in developing technologies between our organizations for automating the ordering and processing of thousands of individual custom size products to be delivered, across multiple trucks, in assembly sequence, on-time, each day.
Those ventures challenged our software vendor, our suppliers, our internal programming teams, production operations, and at times our customers. Those projects forced us all to learn and grow and we became better from the experience.
When shit happens
Experience and Competencies
When catastrophic failures occurred, and they do, we relied on effective leadership, communication, transparency, and collaboration of competencies to improvise, adapt, and overcome until the event was resolved.
Adaptability, Decisiveness and Solutions
Through these endeavors we developed synergies with the management teams and the theories and practices of these multi-billion dollar giants.
They were well defined, and focused on leadership, problem solving, and continuous improvement towards serving the customer more efficiently and effectively.
They aligned with our culture and reinforced our own traits, principles, and values. We helped each other grow as teams, and businesses.
Measurable Results
In turn, we were able to pass along these business competencies and best practices to our own customers to help them grow and become profitable.
Now we are able to pass these best practices on to you and your teams.
Best Regards, and Semper Fi
Rx.
