I am happy you are still with me on this journey after my initial post. In the paragraphs below, I will provide more meat to explain the purpose, benefit and efficacy of Green Door Consulting. I’ll summarize the skillset that I’m working from and outline how it applies to this role. Disclaimer, this post is intended to display an overview of coaching and not discuss all the skills Green Door brings to bear. Succinctly, there are more layers to this onion than outlined in this post.
Business and military have a parallel theme, and it is, “intelligence drives operations, and operations drives intelligence.” Intelligence professionals in all walks of life have a similar mindset, which is to gather as much information as possible, evaluate it for validity, and develop it into intelligence. Intelligence is the final product. Information gathering is the easiest and hardest part of the job all at the same time. Additionally, there is no way of knowing how much total information is available, and how much must be collected to be able to move forward; it can be a tricky process. To add a layer of complexity, intelligence isn’t produced for the sake of itself, but to be able to carry out operations. This applies for business intelligence as well as military intelligence. I know that phrase, military intelligence, makes some people chuckle. Feel free to insert oxymoron jokes here. This background prompts me to constantly seek data and ask questions to better understand the problems that need to be addressed. I often tell people I don’t have all the answers, but do have most of the questions.
In Air Force parlance, intelligence was my career field, but leadership was my job. All branches of the military stress leadership values and instruction early in everyone’s career. Unlike the civilian sector, if you are around for more than a couple years in the military, you have officially/unofficially been assigned leadership responsibilities at one time or another. Additionally, the military requires individuals to take intensive leadership training throughout their career. Finally, something unique to the military leader, is they can’t hire or fire “direct reports,” or employees. Military leaders learn to work with what they have and grow each individual into the best they can be. In today’s business setting where it is harder and harder to find “perfect” employees, hiring and training people with potential instead of experience becomes essential to success.
As mentioned in my introduction, once I retired from the military I earned a Master’s of Science in Organizational Leadership and a graduate certificate in Project Management. The main thing the classes taught me was how to understand the nuances of leading in a corporate environment and adapt the leadership training and experience I gained in the Air Force. Additionally, corporations require leaders to understand human resources functions such as: hiring, firing, and pay issues, among others. For the most part, these are functions handled outside the scope of most military leaders. Many of the classes were also an integral part of my understanding of business. The accounting, marketing, brand management, consumer behavior, etc. teachings expanded on the knowledge I needed to apply the lessons and experience I already had.
Lastly, the project management side of the coin rounded out the overall expertise needed to be an effective consultant. Having great ideas and a clear vision of where you want your business to go are necessary first steps to making business progress. Ideas start the process, but true achievement means having an understanding of the steps needed to get from point A to point B. Along with the chosen path for your business, timelines are crucial to completing tasks and not ending up with multiple unfinished products.
The previous paragraphs outline a 5,000 foot high “look down” view of the skillsets Green Door Consulting will bring to your business. Future posts will outline how to handle business at the ground level. I am a firm believer that empathetic leadership, combined with effective communication, can resolve the majority of problems in business. As a friend of mine used to say, “It’s not rocket surgery.” Leadership is multifaceted and complex, but is learnable and executable by employing a few basic tenets.
