Saturday, December 1, 2012

Team focus


     I have recently returned from Las Vegas after three and a half months.  It was all work!  It was an intensive, compressed period of data loading about my company and the UAS/Drone industry.  The last time I was exposed to that type of environment was while I was in the SEAL teams, working up for deployment or in isolation preparing for a mission.  It is amazing how you can obtain higher levels of ability and understanding during that type of environment!

     Then today I went to the my office for insurance and financial planning and I saw a lack of focus, everyone one was casual and focused on their own deals, all pertaining to financial planning but independent of each other.  The Senior Marketing Director was doing training and he did it in a way that it didn’t look like training. I have been around him a lot and know his pattern and I must say that it is effective but there is another leader in the organization that regularly hosts a webinar, conference call on Monday mornings and he is one of those trainers who know the exact effect of the words and subjects that he is talking about.  I became exposed to that training under Roy Jones Sr. and the Vietnam vets who mentored me in the SEAL teams.  Then I heard other marketing directors talking to their own team members and I couldn’t help but notice everyone was on a different level or page.

     I have a friend who is a research scientist at Scripts laboratories and I swear she is going to win a Nobel Prize one of these days.  She was talking to me about leadership, being direct in your mission at the same time paying attention to the goals and direction of your team and tying to the mission.  It is amazing how few leaders actually pay attention to that!  In a perfect world, every leader would blaze the trail and still be able to drop back in the pack and coach the new members of the team and motivate the stragglers.  When thinking about a Shepard leading his flock, he doesn’t have to keep running back and pushing and herding the strays, he has his team of sheep dogs to do that for him.  In the SEAL teams, the Master Chief sets the pace and gives direction and he has his training chiefs and petty officers pushing everyone along.  Then in the platoon environment everyone is motivated to achieve the next level, Jr. department heads want to become department heads and department heads want to become Leading Petty Officers (LPOs) and LPOs are learning to become chiefs.  Everyone is motivated.

     In the UAS/Drone industry the majority of what I do is to educate people on the capabilities, advantages and savings that can be realized using our UAS/Drone products and programs.  Some times it takes a bit when some one hasn’t turned their attention to the benefits of the technology but once you find that person it is like night and day!  Last night I was trying to line up two perspective clients with each other for a joint benefit and I couldn’t get a hold one of them and I didn’t want to have the weekend start without at least hooking up one of these prospective clients.  So I had a contact with a civilian flight instructor who I had been trying to talk to him and his wife about financial planning and college planning for his baby girl and never could get him and his wife together to talk about it.  I called him up hoping to get my prospective UAS client a plane ride to get some surveillance video and when I explained that I was working with a UAS/Drone manufacturing company, he let me know he has started a course to train UAS/Drone pilots!  Now we are getting together Monday afternoon to talk about our companies cross marketing with each other.  He couldn’t line up an appointment fast enough!  It is amazing how easy it is working for motivated people and the amazing accomplishments that can happen, fast when you on the same page!     

     I am thinking of the perfect working environment, a motivated, focused team with emersion of the right information and encouragement.  Sounds simple doesn’t it?  I think back on many different situations where my great leaders have been able to line me up and let me go, give me a push and it didn’t matter how they said it because I wanted want it was they were directing me to!  Fred Fritch told me when I was trying to decide if I should go to the Olympic trials with the Navy Boxing team or to the Persian Gulf on my first deployment with my platoon.  He was part of the US Olympic bobsled team in 1980, which was made up of four navy SEALs and one Navy Diver.  He told me “I can’t tell you what to do because nobody could tell me but if I were to go to combat, you’re the kind of guy I’d want to have next to me.”  That was all he had to say, I made up my mind!  A year an a half later we were right next to each other on Punta Paitilla airfield in the Republic of Panama during “Operation Just Cause”. 

     It is amazing how he knew what it was that I was actually looking for and it was respect!  Sure I would have gotten respect going to the Olympics but win or loose but I got more from the group I was surrounded by for making the sacrifice that I made, from the SEALs I was around and worked with every day.  How did he know?  Because that is what was important to him!  Birds of a feather flock together.  It is so much easier to communicate with those who come from the same walk of life, which have the same vision that you do.  When you don’t it is like being a fish out of water.  It is amazing how well things work when you are on the same page as your team and how fast they get on the team when you talk to them in their language.