Can soldiers become good businesspeople?

[Swampy]

There's a debate on that, and not just in Australia. Enough said, so let our debate begin.

[jerryfmcompushaft]

To answer that question all one need do is to look at AUSA. They have paid dividends every year I've been a member (since 1955), despite providing excellent, inexpensive insurance. Run by retired military. Google them.

[Sir John]

I have often wondered about all these ex military that go into the world of business and commerce. I wonder at why one should be as at home in an executive office or a military command.

The same with a business executive taking the role of a Lt Colonel, a General/Admiral or whatever.

I can understand a company recruiting an Officer with much knowledge and experience in a particular field but fail to see why that gives him the qualifications to run a business.

and vice-versa of course.

SJ

[Swampy]

The AUSA is open to civilians as well as military personnel, so it probably has quite a large civilian input into its business. That said, many soldiers have served their time and then gone on to rewarding business careers. Col Hal "We Were Soldiers" Moore did that.

OTOH, the Latin American military dictatorships did poorly in planning for their economies during the 1970's and 1980's, but that may be because they didn't adopt a business mindset.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure how it is today, although I imagine it is the same, but most defense contractor companies (Northrup, Raytheon, etc) had as their core ex-military folks. Many of us wound up in senior management positions. Some did that because of their bidness acumen, some because of their knowlege of the core of the company, some for other reasons. Ex-military have many advantages over those who have no military when it comes to running a company. What they DON'T have is the ability to regain those 20-30 years or so they lost while serving in the military while their contemporaries are rising up through the ranks in bidness from the time they graduated from college. All things being equal, if a non ex-military person were to begin his civilian career at 45 alongside a retired military guy, there would be no comparison. You can't replace experience.

[jerryfmcompushaft]

Swampy - Just look at what a Battalion Comander, for instance, has to do vs. what a CEO of a 700 man civilian company has to do, and you can get a good idea of what a Military man has to offer a civilian company. The Bn Commander has to plan for his soldier's training, ensure that the required supplies are on hand when needed, ensure that the unit's equipment is maintained and useable all the time, replace supplies, equipment and personnel when needed, etc. All things a civilian CEO would be expected to do - but - in addition, the Military commander is responsible for the feeding, housing and transportation of his workforce (not to mention the morale and spiritual well being of his troops) something a civilian CEO has no responsibility for, and would bristle if it was even suggested that he become involved in these issues. Now expand that to higher command and you can get comparisons to CEOs of Apple, Microsoft, GE, etc... No comparison.

PS, AUSA is now open to some civilian folks but its senior management is all retired military.

[mcnoch]

I agree with Jerry that good officers have a lot of the neccessary management skills you need to run a business successfully. Higher ranking officers are better suited to work in the higher management, lower ranking officers more with the people. But they lice and work in a system that is not 1:1 comparable to the business world outside. So, they might have the tools to be a good manager, but they also must have the talent and fortune to survive in the business world.

We have a former tank officer, colonel, as one of the managers and he is suffering most from the fact that nobody is following orders in an IT company and that the enemy/customer is not behaving as expected.

[Deleted]

To which I say BS! There can be no doubt that someone such as a Company Commander or higher has the attributes of leadership on a broad spectrum simply because of what they had to do. HOWEVER, you left out two other groups who also qualify nicely, thank you very much. The first are those people who only serve one term, get the basics of discipline and leadership and then get out to go into bidness at some level. The other are retired NCOs who have many of the same responsibilities, although not officially, as senior officers. I have to admit that it's much more unlikely that a senior NCO can just retire and expect a senior level management position in a major company. The company I worked for had a great number of us, both NCO and officer, who had retired and none of us started in senior management, not even the two Generals we hired (our of a company strength at our branch of about 5,000 people, 22,000 world wide). Those of us that did make it to senior management made it because we'd been there, done that, gotten the t-shirt, and knew how to play the game. We had less time to do it because we entered the game later in life, but we had advantages that civilians didn't. Among the most important was that we were unafraid to make decisions on the fly.

To get back to Swampy's earlier question, I'd take a retired (or experienced non-retired) person to run a company any time (I'm referring to a major defense contractor in this instance) over someone who didn't have the experience of dealing with the military.