Why hire an Army officer?
Why hire an Army officer to solve a business problem?
Because for 21 years the Army handed me problems I had never seen, people who knew their jobs better than I did, and a deadline that didn't move. If that sounds like running an organization in Hawaiʻi, you're not far off.
The short answer
Four problems every organization has. The Army made me practice all four for two decades.
"I'm accountable for everything, and I can't be everywhere."
A commander is personally responsible for everything the organization does, on and off the clock. You learn to build systems that run without you in the room, and to push decisions to the people closest to them. Then you own the result anyway.
"My people know their jobs better than I do."
Officers lead specialists: engineers, HR, IT, mechanics, medics, police, logisticians, linguists. Each has more hands-on experience than the officer will ever have. The good ones learn humility early. Set the objective, ask, listen, decide, and back your people.
"The plan won't survive the week."
Officers are trained planners, and the first thing the training teaches is that the plan is the starting point. The discipline is in how you adjust: a clear intent, agreed decision criteria, and a rhythm for checking and correcting.
"I need results, not a report."
In the Army you own the outcome. The unit is better than you found it or it isn't, and someone checks. That is the standard I bring to a two-day workshop or a six-month engagement.
Army 101, for those who didn't serve
What an officer actually does. Translated.
Every Army officer starts as a specialist in one field and is expected to master it fast. The authority that comes with the job has few parallels anywhere: in combat, an officer decides who lives and who dies, and the Army hands that responsibility to people in their early twenties. I was in my early twenties, leading a tank platoon in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Few professions ask that much of their most junior members, and it shapes everything that follows.
Mid-career, the Army starts moving you between jobs that have nothing in common except the need to learn quickly and get the best out of experts. Along the way it keeps sending you to school: strategy, planning, organizational and systems theory, change management, ethics, wargaming, and how adults actually learn. Here is the vocabulary, translated.
| Army term | What it is in your world | What it looked like for me |
|---|---|---|
| Platoon leader | First-line supervisor of 16–40 people and millions of dollars of equipment, age 22–24. | Tank platoon, Iraq 2003. Everyone came home. |
| Company commander | General manager of a 100-person operation. | Cobra Company, Baghdad 2007–08: named the best unit of its size in a division of 14,000. |
| Battalion commander | CEO of a 500–1,000-person organization with its own budget, HR, maintenance, and contracts. | 500+ people, $22M annual budget, 3 government contracts, 13 locations across the U.S. |
| Executive officer / chief of staff | Second in command. Runs the headquarters and the staff (HR, maintenance, supply) so the CEO can lead. | 1,000-person organization; $221M in equipment; 270 vehicles kept at the best readiness rate in U.S. Army Europe. |
| Operations officer | COO: strategy, planning, and the day-to-day operation of the whole organization. | Deployed and supplied a 1,000-Soldier task force from Germany across Eastern Europe; 15 exercises to build and test its operations center. |
| Program manager | Owns a multimillion-dollar program end to end: budget, procurement, training, delivery. | Ran a $110M program that put 220 armored vehicles into a partner nation's hands, with the training to go with them. Also oversaw a NATO program to strengthen that partner's defenses. |
| Non-commissioned officers (NCOs) | Your senior tradespeople and shift leads. The deep expertise. The officer leads them; they know the job better. | The people who made every job above possible. |
| Standard operating procedure (SOP) | Your playbook, written down, so the routine is actually routine. | The first thing I read in any new job. |
| After action review (AAR) | A blameless retrospective: what was supposed to happen, what happened, why, and what we change. | After every exercise, project, and bad day. |
| Tabletop exercise (TTX) | A rehearsal of your worst day, run in a conference room before it happens. | 29+ designed and run. |
| Emergency operations center (EOC) | Your crisis desk: the trained people and the checklist that take the 2 a.m. call. | 375+ staff certified to run one. |
| Commander's intent | The one paragraph that lets your team decide without you. | The most useful management tool I know. |
Where the generalist years went
Speechwriter and briefer for a three-star general (80 speeches, 40 briefings to policymakers, a 28-nation conference). NATO planner overseas, entrusted by the National Security Council with security for a presidential inauguration. Lead author of the Army doctrine that informed a $60B+ budget. Advisor to a foreign defense ministry through a $4.57M transformation. Fellow redesigning a children's hospital's project office. Coach and trainer to 500+ senior leaders from five countries.
A day in the life
One Tuesday in command.
Here is a day from my last command: a 500-person organization spread across 13 locations that trained military advisors, with a $22M budget and three government contracts. I'm in the office well before dawn because of an overnight call involving local law enforcement and one of my Soldiers. By sunrise I've gathered the facts, drafted a plan to manage the risk, and briefed my boss, my peers, and my team on how we'll resolve it and prevent the next one. Then a hard workout with the team, which is the cheapest team-building there is.
Then the day's agenda: remarks at a promotion ceremony, a maintenance inspection, a reorganization discussion, a career conversation with a direct report, lunch with a senior NATO officer to talk partnership, a training evaluation, a review of our certification program, final approval of the statement of work for a government contract, and a look back at last week's crisis rehearsal.
I knew the day would not go to plan. It never does. What made it work was that the routine was actually routine: who owned what was written down, the crisis desk was staffed by people we had trained and certified, the workflows were automated, the numbers were on a dashboard, decisions had criteria and the right people had authority to make them, and everyone knew how we plan, how we communicate a decision, how we develop leaders, and how we learn from what just happened.
So when the COVID-19 emergency was declared and the instruction was, in effect, "cease in-person operations, go remote within 48 hours, and keep 100% accountability of people and equipment," we were ready. Seven training programs redesigned for remote delivery inside those 48 hours, and the organization kept working.
What was behind that day
Fourteen systems. Five things I can build for you.
The same systems, sized for a team of five or an organization of five hundred.
| What the unit had | What it is for you | Where it lives on this site |
|---|---|---|
| Clear terms of reference. Decision criteria, and authority delegated to the people best placed to decide. A standard way to turn a decision into action. | An operating model: who decides what, how work flows, and how a decision becomes action by Friday. | Operating model, cadence & workflow redesign Organizational optimization |
| A trained, certified emergency operations center. Tabletop exercises. A crisis we had already rehearsed. | A crisis plan your team has actually practiced, and a team-building day built around a real objective. | Tabletop exercises, crisis simulations, team building Wargaming & exercise design |
| A disciplined process for analysis, problem-solving, and planning. A training methodology. | A strategy your leadership team helped write and can execute, and training that changes what people do on Monday. | Strategic planning facilitation, curriculum design Training design & strategic planning |
| A defined leader-development system. Developmental counseling. Feedback collected inside and outside the organization. | Leaders who are ready before the promotion, not after it. | One-on-one coaching, cohort programs Executive coaching & leadership development |
| A dashboard of the measures that matter. Automated workflows. Organizational knowledge you can search. A way to examine what and how we are doing, and make the improvements stick. | Numbers you can see, routines that run themselves, and change that survives the consultant leaving. | AI & data tooling; the people side of transformation Organizational optimization · Change management |
By the numbers
Two decades, measured.
21 years
leading Army organizations of up to 1,000 people, on three continents
$22M
annual budget, 3 government contracts, 13 locations, 500+ people in my last command
Top 10%
of 43 peer battalion commanders, in my last command
48 hours
to move seven training programs to remote delivery when COVID-19 was declared
Fair questions
"Isn't that a bit… military for us?"
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Orders are the smallest part of the job. I spent much of my career advising generals and senior officials who outranked me, often from other countries and cultures, and my last command trained 8,500 people to do the same work. You don't give those people orders. You earn the right to be heard, with a clear intent, trust built over time, and results. That is how I work with clients.
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The Army's planning method exists because no plan survives contact with reality. What you get is a faster, calmer way to decide, sized to a team of five or fifty, and honest advice about which parts you don't need. If I can't help, I'll say so and point you to someone who can.
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I was born and raised on Oʻahu and educated at Punahou School and Hawaiʻi Pacific University. I know how local business gets done because I'm from here. This is home.
Next step
If warrior-grade solutions like these can help your organization, give us a call.
We're here to help. The first conversation is free: tell me where you are and where you're taking your organization, and I'll tell you plainly whether I'm the right fit.