Military Adaptive Leaders for your local market
When hiring a military-experienced leader, you’re getting a leader trained in adaptability. With their changing operational environment and modern mission, the skill set of the military’s mid-level managers, the JMO (Junior Military Officer), had to evolve. To meet these demands, the modern-military has designed adaptability and creative thinking into their training doctrine. See Adaptive Leadership in the Military Decision Making Process by Lieutenant Colonel William J. Cojocar, Ph.D., U.S. Army, Retired.
The relevance of military adaptive leaders can be discerned in many arenas, but one of the most important is in the area of importing talent to a particular locale. In addition to frequently having their relocation paid for by the government, military are at a point in their careers where they are ready to consider new places to live for the next phase of their life.
When I’m discussing this with an employer, occasionally I’ll have a hiring manager say their industry’s local knowledge is too specialized. “They’ll eat up an outsider”, one said. And while a team of workers drawn solely from the local community might have its challenges, or local networking might present a hurdle, the adaptive leaders in our modern military have been trained to tackle trials such as these. Your local market may be a tough place to break into, but I bet it is no Afghanistan. Or Sandy (as shown in the image above).
Focusing only on local talent shrinks your pool of potentials, and it ignores the possibility of infusing your team with fresh approaches.
If you are looking for star potential, especially in the tough market many companies find themselves in, then interview the young men and women of the U.S. military. They have been trained to adapt and thrive in tough environments – even yours.
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Image courtesy DVIDSHUB