By Leigh DeBord
“I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade.”
For those of us who served in the United States Army, these words are introduced to us in basic training and we internalize them and embody the Soldier’s Creed. We live the Army Values and commit ourselves to one another. We are willing to pay the ultimate price and sacrifice ourselves to preserve the American way of life.
Without a Commander, In Need of a Purpose
But what happens when we leave the service and enter the civilian workforce? The creed we once lived by no longer guides everyone else around us, and we feel like an outsider. We try to find companies where we identify with their values, mission, or vision in the industries we think are best suited to us. We research what the company stands for and we try to immerse ourselves in the culture, just like we did when we were in the service.
Despite our best efforts, we find that we aren’t assimilating, or we become someone we don’t recognize. Some of us become victims of imposter syndrome, feeling utterly incapable of the jobs we were hired to do. Some of us spend every day frustrated and angry. Why does this happen?
To me, it all stems from relationships. We come from an organization that is made up of teams, all living by a common creed and striving toward the same objectives. No matter what branch of service we come from, we know that we cannot survive alone. We rely on others to be successful and trust that in the most dire circumstances, someone else will have our back.
In the corporate world, though, it is every person for themselves. Company values are treated more like guidelines than rules to live by and the mission, however eloquently worded, at its core, is the bottom line — profit. This creates extreme cognitive dissonance for us. Of course we want to make the company money, but we want to do it the way we were taught: a team effort, everyone trending in the same direction toward a common goal. The corporate world, however, does not foster this environment.
Somewhere between the C-Suite of companies and the frontline worker, the strategic goals get lost. That’s not to say this happens at all companies, but for veterans coming from a culture guided by creed and mission, the difference in the corporate world can be stark.
The Trap of Mid-Level Management
Oftentimes the disconnect between C-suite and frontline workers happens in mid-level management of a company. Instead of nesting operational goals with the company’s strategic goals, teaching and developing their direct reports, and ensuring frontline workers have a safe environment to conduct their job, many mid-level leaders are often focused on doing what is necessary to earn themselves promotions to the next level. Instead of leading and being the bridge between the frontline worker and the strategic level, they are managing three or four levels down. The trap that some mid-level managers fall into is not planning in quarters or months, or even weeks, but rather only focusing on the next day, or the next hour, or on yesterday’s performance. This prevents teaching, leading, and developing, which creates chaos, frustration, and distrust among employees.
Whether we leave our branch of service after four years or twenty years, we typically transition somewhere into the strata of mid-level management. We come into this environment in many cases with more leadership experience than our bosses and peers. We may not know the business acumen or have the technical skills, but we can lead a team.
“I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade.”
So we enter our new managerial position and we start asking our boss for priorities and goals. Many of us get metrics-based answers like, “the priority is to hit this number” or “sell x amount of product” and we are baffled. These are so unlike the objectives we pursued in the military. The answers we are looking for are, “to have zero safety incidents,” or, “have the best quality product in the business”, or, “improve the customer experience by streamlining this specific process.” This lack of mission wears on us over time and causes us to dislike our jobs.
We don’t have time to develop our people because we are bombarded with emails about completing mundane and insignificant tasks. Everything needs to be done now and when seeking clarification on which tasks are most important, we are told they are all equally important and a top priority. It is as if the mid-level leaders forget that they are the manager of a team of people who need purpose, direction, and motivation. They don’t understand what it means to be a manager, a leader of people.
Many of us try to lead up. We try to show our peers and teach our bosses what it means to be a leader of a team. We attempt to explain how the flow of communication should go and what our goals should be and how to plan. Because our way of managing is foreign and not the norm, though, we are made to feel like we are inept and unqualified. We are made to feel as if we are unfit to lead. As a result, we feel like an outsider and begin to question our values and our way of doing things. Some of us conform and then we feel like we have lost ourselves. Others of us begin searching for another job.
Finding Your North Star
Finding and living our command purpose is so important because we need a North Star. We need a core ethic and core values that we can cling to when every external force is applying pressure for us to change or conform. We need to be secure in our mission so that when we face the challenges of the corporate world, we can control what we have influence over. We need to be self-reliant and understand that regardless of what is going on around us, we have a clear mission, intent, and end state for what we want to accomplish.
Our job satisfaction needs to come from within and we need to tailor our lives to fulfilling our purpose. We need to be able to build relationships and be agents of change in the operational level of management. We have to lead by example and create future leaders. We have to teach and mentor and demonstrate how to build a team that can meet objectives and goals. We have to radically change how mid-level managers lead. We need to return the focus to the people, not the profit. We need to create our own creed.