How Being a Military Staff Officer Helps Me as an Entrepreneur

Delivering good solutions in a complex world is hard. But it’s easier if you accept the fact that you need help from others.

Outing yourself as a military guy is not always well-perceived in the business world. Nevertheless, I do it. I am an active reserve general staff officer in the Swiss Armed Forces, and at the same time, I am the Co-Founder & CEO of a B2B SaaS company.

I am not the only military guy in the company. Based on my personal experience, I have hired several colleagues with military backgrounds from several nations.

In this article, I will illuminate some specific aspects of a special group of military guys: staff officers. Those guys typically prepare operational plans and orders on behalf of senior commanders.

Much of what I have learned in general staff officer training is also useful in my daily grind as an entrepreneur.

Here are the five lessons I learned:

1. Solve The Pressing Problems

Staff officers are the analytical problem solvers for their commanders. They are usually assigned to the big, complex problems of military operations. By and large, they work along the following framework:

• Identifying a problem helps them to make sense of the mess out there — military operations are typically required in times of crisis, so no problem will be straightforward. At the same time, delimiting a problem helps staff officers to focus and keep irrelevant side problems away from the core efforts.
• Constant situation assessment is key in a complex world. By using a standardized framework, staff officers make sure they take into account all relevant factors. By synthesizing the different factors to gain insights, consequences can be derived.
• Consequences are the building blocks for options to solve the problem. It is important to always develop at least two options for solving a problem — the situation will change quickly in a complex world, and different options provide the basis for a backup plan should the situation change.
• The option chosen by the commander is the basis for operational plans and orders. Staff officers write plans and orders in a way that they are understood quickly and therefore can be executed by frontline troops reflecting the commander’s intent.

Resources in early-stage companies are typically super-scarce. Entrepreneurs are often acting as staff officers andcommanders at the same time. So you and your co-founders will have to do the work by themselves.

In such a situation, using a battle-proven framework for problem-solving adds enormous value to a company. As an example, we were forced to reorganize the entire company when COVID-19 struck and our pipeline in the aviation industry collapsed. My co-founders and I used the staff work processes we knew from the military — instead of panicking, we used our judgment and the problem-solving framework described above to assess the new situation, develop options, decide on the new course of action, and communicate it to our team.

The result? Since COVID-19 struck, we significantly enlarged our customer base in the aviation industry and added additional customers in new industries.

2. Embrace Uncertainty And Ambiguity

Legend has it that Winston Churchill called military planning a “necessary evil”, and experience shows that no military plan survives the first shot. Today, people rather talk about VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity), but they essentially mean the same thing as Churchill.

Staff officers need to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity — because there is plenty in military operations, and there is no way of getting rid of them.

The same is true in business — create as many business model spreadsheets and project Gantt charts as you like, you will always need to adapt them when problems surface.

Business leaders still tend to work in budget cycles and approve annual plans — why not start adapting planning if and when required, irrespective of the budget cycle, previous plans, or personal plans for the weekend?

Agility is a great principle for adapting to new situations. At the same time, agility is easily misunderstood with changing operational plans all the time. For both military operations and business, constantly changing plans can divert efforts from the main objective. So, therefore, you need to learn the fine art of being agile, and at the same time “letting the division roll once it rolls”. Aviation provides many examples for quick decision-making in dangerous environments, and for sticking to those decisions once they are made.

3. Focus On The Big Picture, But Don’t Forget The Relevant Details

Dwight Eisenhower paid detailed attention to the weather developments in the weeks and days before D-Day. Given the thousands of vessels that needed coordination on D-Day, paying detailed attention to the weather might look distracting and irrelevant. However, have you thought about the tides, the moonshine, or the wind conditions for the fragile glider planes that were a key element in the operation?

It’s the same in business: Generating revenues and building a great product are the key objectives of any business. However, can you succeed without paying attention to currency fluctuations, business continuity processes, or building a network of local partners in that specific country in the Middle East where you are chasing an opportunity?

4. Accept That Resources Are Limited

When thinking of limited resources in the military, you most probably think of troops and weapons. In business, you most probably think of employees and money.

However, time is always the limiting factor, be it in military or business contexts. Here is the Golden Rule to adhere to in all situations:

Always prefer a good solution in time over a perfect solution too late.

Good solutions are simple solutions. Simple solutions need less time to plan and implement, and simple solutions need fewer resources.

In the military, complex solutions put your troops at risk, plus they are difficult to command and execute.

In business, complex solutions often take too long to implement, and a competitor will take advantage. There is always a competitor who has more resources available than you, so you better act quickly with your limited resources and outmaneuver your competitors. If your business grows, you can always upgrade your solution later on.

5. Get Help from Others

This one is the most important lesson, and the one least talked about. Staff officers are generalists — they don’t know anything. They only know about connecting different chunks of information, and about synthesizing solutions from these chunks of information.

The same is true for entrepreneurs: When you start a company, you just do whatever needs to be done, without really knowing how to do it. As an example, I was doing payroll myself in the early days of our company, not having known anything about social contributions, payroll accounting, or taxation at source. Only when the company started to grow did we contract a payroll accountant, who took this task from me to execute it way better than I ever could have. I then used my time to take care of the next task which I didn’t know anything about.

Therefore, both a staff officer and an entrepreneur are completely lost without a network of people who can help them. Learning is a lot easier if you know a person you can ask for help — imagine you needed to search the internet to learn about tank tactics or payroll processes!

Those knowledgeable people will also be able to give critical feedback on your solution by answering whether your solution is simple enough to work in the real world.

Last but not least, working with others raises morale and makes work more fun. And if you’re enjoying work also in difficult times with difficult missions, you’re more likely to succeed.

Read all my articles on entrepreneurship!

Join my mailing list to receive an update whenever I publish a new article!