War = Life

War is brutal, horrific and shows the worst of humankind. It is also heroic, beautiful and shows the best of humankind.

But above all, it can be an incredible teacher.  

What does war look like?

A lot of stress, dynamic, rapidly changeing, there is never enough information, nor resources, decisions need to be made regardless, and if we make a mistake it can have high consequences – people will die.

But what most may not realize is that there’s  not much difference when comparing war to life. To me, the battlefield looks a lot like everyday life or what people and leaders face every day at work or at home.  

If it is so similar, then why is the preparation for war and life so different? And what could we learn from that?

Would you like to go to war like the Russian soldiers are forced to go? You go on the bus, here you have a gun, war is that way, good luck! Almost no preparation.

No, I don’t think so. Yet most of us do it exactly like that when it comes to life or when we take our first steps in the world of business.

Let me explain.  

If you are born in a family where you are not taught social skills, leadership, or how to deal with money then you will learn through failure and by the example of the people around you. Your first team in life is your family. That is your first example of leadership. Your experience will be either good or bad depending on the family.   

If you are lucky, you get a good starting point, if not then where could you learn how to  build a team? How to be a good team player? What does it take to be a good leader?

Maybe you will learn when you go to school or become part of the workforce.

How good your teachers or classmates are, again determines what will be your experience. School is something that is supposed to prepare us for life. It teaches us  specific skills, like how to read and how to calculate which are crucial but it doesn’t really prepare us nor teach much about team building, leadership, or any  other important traits needed in life after school or even during school. School is more about worrying about your results and yourself than teamwork. Teamwork is not graded – at least it was not, in my case.

That means for most of us when  we enter our first job, we will again be dependent on who will be around us and influence us as leaders. If we are lucky, we get good leaders and we can learn from them if not then we need to make a lot of mistakes ourselves and then maybe we understand at least what doesn’t work. But I’m pretty sure it’s not the preferred method for most of us.

Furthermore, what if this would be the method of how we also prepare for fighting during the war?

At what point in our upraising are we expected to understand how to lead and bring success to our lives? How many of us when starting our first job knew that they were in total control of their life or had a say in their destiny? Did we realize that we were already leaders?

There will always be stories about great leaders, and legends and there are even movies that give us a glimpse of what winning looks like. To me, it painted a picture that leaders are born which means that if I am not born a leader then that’s it. It is definitely not what I have seen.

Life has always been and will be about people, teams, and the community. Humans are social beings. Then why don’t we teach these things at school or in our business?

Many could say that all of this is, indeed, taught – at least in universities. And I agree, on some level, that only a lot of theory is taught.

Theory without practice is almost worthless. It is almost like an idea without execution.

Let’s say that I have a great new business idea. How many purely good theoretical ideas are there? If the practical part is missing, then nothing useful happens.

What would I do just with theory in WAR? I would be in the same situation when with my family or on the first day in any company. I would need to learn from my mistakes.

For me, the shift happened when I retired from the Special Forces four years ago. I became part of the defense industry and got my first experience of what it was like to be part of a team in the civil world.

Quite fast I started seeing that there is no common understanding of how to lead people. Don’t get me wrong – there are good leaders, but the common understanding of how to become a good leader comes through trial and error.

In the military, peacetime is used for preparing for war and if you prepare well enough you will not get to go to war. Now, if we compare it with the civil world, it would look something like the following: we prepare to come out with a great product or start an awesome company, but success is if we fail to ever really launch it. Such a result would be the equivalent to remaining peaceful.

It means that in the civil sector, it is war all the time. From day one you enter some kind of competition; it is a full-on war against other warriors who have been fighting for years and years.

Now, wouldn’t it be a bit more practical to be more prepared, at least on the fundamental level, on how to lead, how to build teams, and have some sort of experience-based knowledge of HOW?

The military education system for the front lines is mostly practical. It must be practical otherwise you would end up in the war with great ideas but no understanding of how to act in real life situations while under stress.

Most of the training is done on a field. As in every organization you need different skills/specialties and military also considers LEADERSHIP as a skill. It needs to be practiced, taught, and the learning will never stop.

Military leadership training is carried out through the practical application of simulated combat environments. In any dynamic rapidly changing environment mistakes will happen. As they happen, we have to learn from them. A basic commonly understood framework is provided.

To be a successful leader on the battlefield you need to follow the 4 laws of combat. These are Cover and Move, Simple, Prioritize and Execute, and Decentralized Command. In short, the following needs to happen. We need to work as a team. We need to simplify our communication so we understand where we are moving. In case there are obstacles on our way we need to understand how we deal with them and in which order, as we can’t solve all problems at once. Lastly, everyone needs to be able to make decisions and decide autonomously if the situation dictates so.

If we make a mistake, it means we violated one or more laws of combat. Debrief is where all the leadership mistakes will be identified and then improved during training exercises. Combat environment has a way of giving very rapid feedback. If you make a mistake, you will feel it, if you made a good decision you will feel that as well. In this kind of environment, we can learn much faster than just sitting in the classroom reading a book. It is hard to learn how to swim, alking about it in the classroom, we need to get ourselves wet in the pool. That’s why theory is only half of the solution.  

It took us three years of training to be ready to join the fight in Afghanistan. One might say that we do not have that kind of luxury to prepare for business or life because we do not have “peacetime”.

We could change the system of how and what we teach at school or how we onboard people, but that is more realistic in the long-term.

What could we change today? 

One of the main missions of special forces on top of fighting in war is to advise and train others and act as a force multiplier. How do you do that? You must go to the trenches together with the forces you are mentoring. If you bring the right tools and people with the right attitude at the time of crisis, problems will get solved. Every problem is a leadership problem. 

Sounds good in theory, right?

In 2019 many things happened in my life. I got separated from the mother of my child, I was in debt due to a failed business adventure, I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have a place to live nor did my daughter and I only had about 500€ in my bank account. I realized that after retiring from the military, I didn’t use any of the things I learned in the Army, because I thought now I am a civilian and it didn’t cross my mind that I could apply the same principles here. It was clear to me who was the problem. It was me, I was the problem! It was a hard pill to swallow. I went back to the basics. I read a book called Extreme Ownership written by Navy Seals Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. It talks about the framework that special operation forces live by and how the same principles can be utilized in the civilian world. Addition to 4 laws of combat there is also a mindset that we need to live by if we want to be successful as leaders. 

As a leader we need to be aggressive by default – we need to take initiative, because problems do not solve themselves. We need to be able to innovate and adapt to changes on the battlefield constantly. Next, we need to stay disciplined because otherwise our blade will not remain sharp. I think I did quite ok with the previous three. Most important characteristic of a great leader is humility. We can’t fall in love with ourselves, and we need to take control of our EGO. On the battlefield, if we start thinking that we are smarter than our enemies, then soon we will get humbled. Same applies in life.

At that point what I needed to do was to take Extreme Ownership – It means that I needed to take ownership of everything that had happened and will happen in my life. In the same way as a leader needs to when on the battlefield.

If you can look into the mirror and figure out how you are the problem, then that is where we want to be! Sounds crazy, right? But if I am the problem, it means that I am also the solution. If we take ownership of the problems, we can also solve them.

The First Law of combat is Cover and Move, which means teamwork. It is the 1st law with a good reason. If we do not work as one team it really does not matter what or how we do it, we will fail as a team. If a team fails everyone fails. We need to work together and first cover each other so others can cover us when we need it. We just need to build relationships and take care of each other. When I was in a hole the ones who ended up covering for me were the close friends and my teammates. I almost didn’t need to ask. People are always the most important asset we have. If you are a leader or a member of a team, the team needs to always be number 1. If you take care of your team – the team will take care of you.

We need stronger leadership fundamentals, and that’s what we in Combat Ready here in the EU and Echelon Front in the US have taken on as our mission.

Leadership is not something we are born with; it is a skill, and it can be taught.

Let’s start Training as we fight!