Veteran Struggles in Corporate America

 

Veteran Struggles in Corporate America

The last few years of my practice have been focused primarily on veterans and active‑duty military families. In that work, I’ve watched service members transition into civilian life — both separatees and retirees. As a retiree myself, I recognize pieces of my own story in many of the men and women who have left the service after me.

From my admittedly limited vantage point, one trend keeps surfacing, and it’s troubling: veterans struggle to maintain employment after leaving the military. The more I’ve observed it, the more I’ve asked why. Recently, I’ve come to a conclusion — whether universally true or not — that veterans struggle in corporate America because they do not feel valued. And they don’t feel valued because they aren’t given a voice.

To understand this, we need to look at what it means to be part of a team in an all‑volunteer organization. I won’t claim all volunteer organizations are the same, but I do understand the U.S. military.

The military is made up of men and women who raise their right hand and swear an oath. With that oath comes a promise: you will serve, and in return, you will be surrounded by people who are on your team and who have your back. From day one, you’re given a level of responsibility most Americans will never experience. You may be issued a weapon that would otherwise be illegal to possess — a fully automatic, belt‑fed machine gun, for example. You’re entrusted with life‑and‑death decisions every time you carry it. You cannot always wait for someone to tell you when or how to act. You are expected to decide, and you will be held accountable for that decision.

Team dynamics in the military are shaped by scarcity and necessity. There’s no line of applicants waiting outside the door. There are unfilled positions everywhere. That matters, because on those teams, every person counts. Every person contributes to keeping you alive.

The trust within these teams is unilateral. Imagine leading a group of people you would go to war with. How would you lead them? What would matter most?

What matters most is competence — how good they are at their job. If someone is underperforming, you can’t simply fire them. You wouldn’t, unless you truly believed they could not improve. If you did remove them, you’d create a gap that might remain open for months. And when a replacement finally arrives, they’ll be new, inexperienced, and you’ll still have to trust them with your life.

This environment creates a culture where everyone wants everyone else to be the best version of themselves. It becomes a place where every voice matters. Leaders hold ultimate authority, but no leader pretends to have all the answers. From the beginning, the lowest‑ranking person is encouraged to speak up if something doesn’t make sense or if they see a better way. Leaders listen because they know they can’t see everything — and because small details matter.

Picture a battlefield. Gunfire, chaos, pressure. If the new guy runs over and says he sees a better way to accomplish the mission, would you tell him to get back in line? Probably not. You’d hear him out, even if only long enough to evaluate whether his idea could work.

Teams in combat communicate constantly — over radios, by shouting, by any means necessary. They communicate because everyone needs to know what’s happening outside their own field of vision.

Corporate America is not the same.

When I talk with veterans during transition and in their first few years out, the theme is consistent. They take a job they’re excited about and often quit within a year. Retirees quit even more frequently because they have a pension to fall back on. They don’t need a job — they want one.

From a veteran’s perspective, including my own, corporate America does not give us a voice. In truth, it doesn’t give most employees a voice. Workers are expected to fill a position and function like technicians — or robots. Why are robots and AI seen as threats to American jobs? Because many workplaces don’t want people with ideas or perspectives. They want someone to put the screw in the widget.

I don’t believe this lack of voice is unique to veterans. I believe it’s common across industries. Veterans simply feel it more acutely because the contrast is so stark. They spent the formative years of their lives being heard. They spent those years feeling valued. Corporate America often strips that away.

My encouragement is simple: give your people a voice. Giving voice creates value. And an employee who feels valued is the one who shows up — when it’s hard, when it’s uncertain, even on their day off to help the new guy.

Give 100% in Everything You Do

This is my second principle. It is one we’ve all heard about one-million times. It is even cliché in many ways. We have so many things we do every day, how do we expect that we will be able to give 100% effort to all of it (the discussion on multi-tasking is one I’ll save for another day, or let you do your own research). There is more to the idea of giving 100% however, than the, often, short-sighted thought or view-point we give to it.

Most of us apply this principle automatically to the things we are passionate about; the things we care about personally and the things which will give us measurable gains in some area of our lives. If we know or expect we realize some gains from our endeavors, we give extreme effort toward the conduct of our business.

Here is the principle in application. What we have to do is ensure we are applying a deliberate decision-making process to every task we are given. Here is the process I use. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. “Is this worth 100% of my effort?” If the answers lead to “yes, this is worth doing,” then give it 100% of your effort. If “no,” then ask the following question.

2. “Is there a good reason to do it?” If the answer “yes, there is a good reason,” then give it 100% of your effort. If “no,” move on to next, tougher question.

3. “Why am I doing this, is it even worth doing?” Often, if we reach this point in the decision process, we have to actually start asking outside sources. We often have to go to the person asking us to accomplish the task and ask them the questions. Sometimes we have to challenge our superiors on the tasks they’ve given us. If the reasoning can be explained and you are convinced it is worth your time, then give it 100%.

           We always have to ask ourselves if things are worth doing. If we can’t think of a reason, then we have to ask our superiors the tough questions and seek clarification. We need the clarification in order to give the appropriate amount of effort to the appropriate tasks.

           The bottom line I’m trying to get after with this principle is we can’t do everything, but anything we do should be to the absolute best of our abilities. Giving the appropriate amount of effort (100%), ensures we are getting our work done to standard and builds trust in ourselves and between us and our subordinates, peers, superiors, friends, and family. 

A Principle: Today is My Last Day to Train (Learn)

I have four principles I try to live by both professionally and personally. I really think others can benefit from these principles, regardless of the career field in which they work. In an effort to better message, and reach out to members of my profession, as well as others, I’m going to write about the first principle here and write about the others in subsequent articles.

The first principle: Maintain and attitude that says, “today is my last day to train (learn).” This principle, I believe, is especially important to those in the profession of arms, but still applies to those who are not. The examples I discuss here may be focused on the profession of arms, but that doesn’t mean there no examples in other areas.

This principle is simple in a lot of ways, but is also very demanding. We must always strive to improve ourselves and our organizations. Every day we have to ask ourselves what we’ve done to make ourselves and our organizations better. If, in asking ourselves this question, we cannot find a sufficient and legitimate answer, we might need to step back into the office, or into the field, and get back to work. Our day simply cannot end if we haven’t done what is required of us.

The answer to this question also doesn’t have to be anything too elaborate. If we have conducted battle-drills with our Soldiers, if we have studied our craft, if we’ve taken the time to train, coach, and mentor our subordinates, we’ve done exactly what we needed to do. The challenge is in the little stuff. As we all know the importance of, and strive for, mastery of the basics, there are so many little things we can do to better prepare our soldiers for unexpected war. Something as simple as magazine changes, helps every subordinate be more lethal on the battle field.

We have all been to firing ranges and seen the young soldier have a malfunction and be completely lost on the correction of that malfunction. The easy cop-out is to blame that Soldier for not attending Primary Marksmanship Instruction (PMI), or not paying close enough attention. I would have you direct your anger, or rather disappointment, to his supervisor. How many times has his first-line supervisor taken that soldier out and conduct magazine changes? Have his Leaders made him go conduct “SPORTS” (proper immediate action on a malfunctioned rifle) to the point it is muscle memory? Or did we, as leaders, trust the PMI to have been enough? Now, is not the time for this Soldier to learn the proper technique. He is now on the firing line, and his score counts.

This example is a perfect Segway as we apply this principle to combat operations. We have to treat every day as though it is our last to train because we never know when the call will come. We don’t know when the proverbial balloon will go up. We cannot allow our Soldiers, or ourselves, to have to conduct anything for the very first time when the enemy is actively engaging us. We, as leaders, have to do everything we can to get that training in now. It doesn’t matter if that training is focused on closing with and destroying the enemies of our nation, defending ourselves, or in the careful application of our craft in stressful environments.

If we haven’t experienced those phone calls, or the constant change of timelines for deployments to training or overseas, we can at least imagine it and conclude priorities will shift tremendously when called to deploy in support of our nation. There will be no more time to train. Bags will be packed, containers will be loaded, vehicles will be readied, and time with families will be the number one priority of ourselves as well as our Soldiers. Training, will cease to exist when we get the call for war. At that point, it is too late.

I urge us all to maintain an attitude that says “today is my last day to train!”