Enjoy monthly reads, reflections, and thoughts from our wisdom filled team.
Hint – they are using the Good to Great playbook, First Who……. Then What principle of Level 5 Leadership. For those who have not read the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, the first principle or character trait of a Level 5 Leader is this “First get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it…
“Bashert” is a Yiddish word intimating destiny, commonly used in the context of one’s soulmate.
The Platoon Commander tour for a Navy SEAL is the pinnacle for a young officer. It was for me. It’s the ultimate in operational leadership. While rank gets you professional courtesy, you must earn respect. As with many operational leadership roles, that happens through your experiences of shared misery - - in the trenches WITH them.
When I started my college baseball career, my primary position was as a catcher. However, I quickly learned that I did not have the skill set required to be an everyday catcher in college. To find more playing time, I took advantage of every opportunity to learn and play new positions. My senior year…
Most sports teams at the beginning of their season have lofty goals such as winning a national championship. Winning a national championship can be a daunting goal, and the path to reach that goal is long and arduous. To achieve such a lofty goal, you must break the journey down into smaller and more manageable steps. When my college baseball team won a conference title, we did so by focusing…
In sports, the military, and business it is easy to go through the motions of a task mindlessly, and many people mistake activity for productivity. For example, during a typical baseball practice, it was easy for me to field hundreds of groundballs mindlessly. However, if I did not have a clear purpose to what I wanted to work on when fielding the groundballs, then the time spent fielding the groundballs was a waste of time. The best coaches are the ones who can…
Green Berets have a high degree of emotional intelligence and are great at training partner forces and building rapport. Green Berets are known as “the quiet professionals.” Their operations are designed to be done in secret, and for their work to go largely unnoticed and unrecognized. To operate this way takes a great deal of planning, cooperation, and, teamwork.
Motivating a team and aligning them against the same goal is a critical task for every manager. As a former Green Beret, I always think of the Commander’s Intent we used when planning missions as a great way to provide motivation and alignment. Green Beret and Army Commanders use the Commander’s Intent to sum up all the essentials of a mission with no extra fluff.
Failure was a regular part of my life both while playing college baseball and in the Navy. Failure was accepted as a part of doing business in both communities. Failure is embraced by the best athletes and F/A-18 aircrew because they see the value in failure as an opportunity to learn and a necessary step towards improvement. Every hitter in baseball will go through the humbling experience of a hitting slump where it seems like you can’t even remember the last time that you got a base hit. Rather than hide from my failures as a hitter, I learned to embrace…
I get a chance to read and hear many startup pitches, see the inner workings (and challenges) small to mid-size companies of all industries face daily. It is clear to me that (and no coincidence) so many Navy SEALs start new businesses, help grow existing businesses, and succeed at a much higher rate than non-SEALs.
Victory Strategies is a Veteran Owned Business.
