5 Military Leadership Principles missing in Business Organizations

Leadership principles have been around for thousands of years and yet, I am still wondering why some basic leadership principles are so rarely followed in business organizations.

Let me get this straight from the start: I am no expert on leadership and I have little experience, but I am passionately accumulating knowledge and trying new techniques daily.

Additionally, I have followed the military officer education for the militia, i.e. the reserve. At the same time, I studied International Business Administration and Management, have 7 years of corporate and start-up experience and followed a three-year program to become a certified personal development coach.

Whenever you learn about strategy, you will stumble over Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’. It is similar to when you want to learn about leadership, you will learn about principles used in the military. Simon Sinek titled his leadership book “Why Leaders eat last” based on a rule in the military.

The C-19 pandemic has directed public focus to organizations that work well in crisis and guess what — the military is not only an expert in crisis mode but was designed for it.

In my military education, I was introduced to 13 military leadership principles and a clear military command process. The principles I learned are:

• Specific Objective — needs to be defined, communicated & demanded

• Unity of Command — one task has one responsible, responsibility is not divided

• Initiative (i.e. Proactivity) — Actively using available room for maneuvering means gaining freedom of action

• Concentration of main effort — all needed resources focused on the target at the right time and place

• Cooperation —between all forces increases effect and probability of success

• Economy of Force — coordinate between effort and rest to have full performance when needed

• Create/Keep a (tactical) reserve — always have a reserve

• Mobility — physical as well as mental, courage to take decisions

• Surprise & Deception — sometimes the only way to work against superior opponents

• Simplicity — do not overcomplicate things

• Synchronization — similar to cooperation,

• Protection & Security — protect your people and organization

• Information Superiority — you should always have a clear picture of what is going on, needs to be updated continuously

Some of those are easy to understand and make a lot of sense and some might seem weird or strike you as a no-brainer. Anyway, those are the 13 I was taught, each one has its implications, easy-to-miss pitfalls when put into practice and pointers on how to make sure you can follow them.

In any case, I do not understand why those 5 are not adhered to more in the business world:

Specific Objective

A clear goal needs to be defined, communicated and demanded. A military command consists of situation, mission, operation overlay, combat & command support.

These commands are made on every organizational level, all the way down to a group of 6–10 people. That way specific goals are derived for every unit and communicated on every level.

In combat, a shooting command is given verbally and repeated back to the commanding superior to make sure it is understood. Hence, even in the most stressful situation, you make sure the goal is clear.

I am not saying that business organizations don’t work towards specific objectives or goals.

In organizations, communication through the ranks is often sloppy at best. Usually, a company has a multitude of goals, objectives and individual targets floating around.

The way I experienced it is that the goals of different business units even get in the way of each other.

At the same time, follow-up on these goals is often not handled. That is what is meant by demand. Leadership needs to make sure specific goals are communicated:

A good start would be to make sure everyone understands their specific goal by having them repeat & internalize it.

However, leadership also needs to demand the fulfillment of this goal. Of course, this can mean getting dirty and supporting or at least coaching your team. Otherwise what good is a leader for?

Hence, set a clear goal, communicate it to every level, and make sure it is understood. Finally, check and support the achievement of the goal.

Unity of command

There is nothing worse than following a meeting where everyone agreed, no one lifts a finger after and nothing gets done. What happened here?

No one neither took nor delegated responsibility for each task. No matter how flat you want your hierarchy to be, or how much of a great team you are, there needs to be unity of command.

Too often I sat in meetings where things were discussed and a lot of colleagues had strong opinions and weren’t afraid to share them. But no one volunteered to take up responsibility for things that already went wrong or were up next on the docket.

People need to take complete ownership, as Jocko Willink might say.

That means someone needs to be overall responsible, i.e. be the boss. And every task needs to have one responsible person. This needs to be decided, communicated and again demanded/followed up upon.

Concentration of main effort

That is how World War II was turned around. By the concentration of effort on one battle. Imagine how hard it must have been to take this decision before knowing it was right.

My former boss oftentimes used the metaphor of “riding dead horses” when he talked about how we spent our effort on the wrong opportunities/clients.

Unfortunately, his metaphor barely ever helped. Proper qualification is one of the hardest, yet most crucial points in deciding where you will place your effort. Concentrating your main effort will not only increase your chances of success but might also just increase how much fun you have doing what you are doing.

Imagine working in an environment where everyone is pulling the same rope.

I’ve made the experience that we were working on too many things at the same time and some of those things weren’t even worth the effort at all.

Try to figure out where and what you should focus on and see what happens!

Economy of force / Keep a reserve

Even during military training exercises, we keep a reserve. Imagine you go on training and train taking a break. The reason is that certain procedures need to be automated. Keeping a reserve is crucial for success, hence it is trained as well as all other necessary activities.

The second principle here is economy of force. One should always coordinate between effort and rest to safeguard full performance when needed.

In business, on the first day of a new quarter, we were greeted by management with an email saying “Welcome and here we go.” Past performance did not matter, as it was history and you were tasked to push forward.

Although there is a general change in the way companies approach work-life balance and employee well-being, it is still viewed as a personal responsibility. However, the principle of economy of force and keeping a reserve are essential leadership priorities and must be implemented top-down.

Management should lead by example, taking time off, implementing processes to get access to resources and ensuring employees are taking enough breaks.

Cooperation

Every unit in the military, such as infantry, mountain infantry, mechanized infantry, engineers, etc. has a set of tasks they are designed for. To be successful, all of these functions need to work together.

The same goes for business units in companies. My experience stems from working in software sales and solution advisory. I had to cooperate with marketing, (implementation) consulting and customer success (i.e. after-sales service), just to name a few.

All of these units should in theory have the same goal in mind: A happy, long-term customer. Unfortunately, it was harder to get everyone to work together than to persuade a customer what all of these functions are good for.

Simply read, cooperation is one of the most apparent principles. It makes little sense that it is so hard to achieve, but human egos and isolated views on problems often get in the way.

If you listen to an orchestra it becomes clear what cooperation can achieve. If you watch the conductor you can see why it needs to be a leadership function.

Conclusion

Leadership is hard, really hard. However, it does not need to be re-invented. There are principles out there that are proven and available to you. Taking care of your reports has to be priority #1. Reaching your desired objective #2.

Following:

• a specific objective with

• unity of command &

• concentration of effort while

• keeping a reserve &

• cooperation between all units

are great principles to follow. Try keeping them in mind and see what happens!