Tag: veteran

Finding Purpose after transition

Far too few people are talking about  finding your purpose after you get out. This is probably the biggest challenge you will face, and it’s largely ignored in transition advice.  When you wore the uniform, you were a part of something bigger than yourself.  You wore the flag, defended the constitution, belonged to a unit with history, medals, and tradition.  If you failed to do your job, people died, the war was lost, the great experiment that is the USA itself is at risk.

But now?  Now what?

Now you make widgets, and seriously, who gives a damn if they don’t get made?
sad homer simpson GIF

You didn’t join the military because of money, and money has never been a great motivator.  You look around at civilians that are motivated by money and pity them.  They have never been a part of something like you.  They value their jobs as if customers not getting their widgets in time is really of any consequence whatsoever.  You’ve seen death.  You’ve seen children starving and abused.  You’ve seen any number of horrible things, and you know these widgets don’t matter.  So what is the point of it all?

This is the realization so many veterans face, often years after they get out.  When they are no longer surrounded by the veteran community.  When they no longer talk to their army buddies every day.  They lose hope, meaning, and purpose, then they make a fateful decision.

This is why I am speaking up, because this isn’t a fucking game.   Because transition doesn’t end the day you get a damn job, it’s only just starting.  Because three years after you get out, you’ll be sitting at a fireworks show and all of a sudden your heart will start racing and you’ll have a hard time sleeping that night for the first time.  Because four years after you get out, you’ll get a call that one of your friends was killed and you’ll have to get up the next day with a smile on your face and pretend nothing happened because you’re meeting with customers and trying to make a sale.  Because seven years after you get out, you’re going to wonder what the hell you’re doing with your life and what actually matters to you.  Because your transition goes on long after you get out, because you’re not learning to be a civilian, you’re learning to live in the civilian world; there’s a difference.

Deciding Where to Step Next?

If you want to avoid this pothole, you need to find something that is going to give you meaning and purpose above yourself.  I don’t know what will work for you, but here’s what works for me:

First it’s my family.  My three kids and my wife are my life.  If you read the book, that will be abundantly clear, I spend half of it talking about my life as a family man.

Next it’s you, the reader of this very article.  I have lost too many friends to the demons in their minds, and I felt compelled to do something.  CONUS Battle Drills is fun, funny, entertaining, but also raw, honest, and in your face.  Why?  Because that was exactly what my life as an infantryman in the 82nd was like.  If in all my ramblings, I can help someone turn things around, then I have made a difference in this world, and that means something.

Third it’s my church and charity.  I know, I cuss way too much, but Jesus loves me anyway.  Giving my time and money to those who need it has allowed me to feel that sense of gravity and import that wearing a uniform did.  I have never felt so much joy with my money as when I have given it generously.

So what will it be for you?  Are you going to start your own business?  Volunteer your time? Write poetry?  Make music?  Give your money?  Do something that matters, that’s bigger than yourself, you need it!

-LJF

 

For more information on transition, get the highly rated book on Amazon:

All These Transition Experts, So Little Expertise

The beauty of the internet and social media is that it has given us a medium to connect millions of people instantly, where all our voices can be heard.  We freely share our experiences and knowledge with each other and even though we’re strangers, we connect and learn from each other.  The problem for the transitioning veteran is identifying what’s good or bad advise for leaving the service. Often times the worst offenders for giving out bad advice are the well-meaning veterans who are self-proclaimed experts that start dangerously doling out advice on things they know very little about.

We’ve noticed a trend, particularly on LinkedIn, where there are thousands of transition experts all giving advice on how to navigate the difficult process.  Some give good advice having been out of the military for a while, learned the ropes of civilian life and offer their transitional experience for the betterment of their fellow veterans.  Then there are those who more often that not miss the target of offering value-adding information. Let’s just put them in categories:

  • The veterans who retired and immediately went to work for the government
  • The veteran who got out of the military 6 days ago, but because he found a job, now he thinks he knows how to “successfully transition”
  • The veteran who sees transition advice as a ticket to making a lot of money
  • The veteran who wants to be a motivational speaker and tells you “everything is awesome!”

 

The Lack of Experience & Expertise

There is a well-known pillar of how wisdom is accumulated known as the DIKW pyramid. Wisdom is achieved by first collecting data, turning it into bits of information, then compiling it into knowledge. Enough knowledge produces wisdom. Reaching the wisdom phase is not something you can take a course on and POOF, you’re certified; you have to EARN it.  Veterans who lack the time commitments necessary to develop experience and expertise in the civilian world, also lack the qualifications of claiming to be competent sources of knowledge and wisdom for other transitioning veterans.  Basically, they don’t know enough to give you advice.

Transitioning out of the service isn’t easy; it is a never ending process and a constant review of your adjustment in the non-military world. Though it’s not easy, it doesn’t have to be hard.  Lots of folks out there think that civilian hiring managers are dying to hire veterans. With all those organizations out there and transitions assistance resources available, it appears as if there are thousands and thousands of jobs JUST FOR YOU!

Yeah…that’s all bull.

It’s a great marketing technique for a company to say they’re going to hire a thousand veterans. What they’re actually doing is looking for veterans with a few years of civilian experience that served four years in the early 2000’s; not a newly minted veteran who just left the military this morning and is firmly wrapping themselves up in their DD-214 blanket.

Why?

Because the veteran getting out today doesn’t know anything about business. From a hiring managers perspective a veteran doesn’t understand my business, my customers, my product, how to make my product, how to sell my product, my organizational structure, etc.

To put it a different way.  Imagine you had a CEO of some company who decide to join the military. They have no military experience; they’ve never even fired a gun. They were in charge of a multi-million dollar company though.  Would you put that person in charge of a brigade of paratroopers in Afghanistan or, a Regiment of Marines or, a fleet of Navy ships?  HELL NO!  No way whatsoever!  Why?  This CEO obviously has great leadership; they were in charge of an entire commercial business company.  Yeah, but he knows fuck-all about combat and he’s going to get people killed.  Best I’d do is make him a low level Captain working for a seasoned staff officer in the command center so he can learn how we fight. This is exactly the type of job you’re going to get when you transition away from uniformed service and that’s a BEST case scenario.

Unfortunately there are assholes that don’t know any better (or realize it but don’t care) and are feeding inexperienced veterans bad information about how to step right into an executive or managerial leadership role. Or worse, the inexperienced “transition assistant” stepped into a company as an “executive” who’s sole purpose is to help other veterans find jobs. The funny but sad thing is Duffel Blog made a satire story about this very phenomenon. These transition assistants purport to know all the answers, have all the inside hiring scoops and, know the path veterans should take to transition successfully into corporate America.

Comforting Lies

Those people outlined above won’t tell you any of this.  They don’t have the experience to know right from wrong. They haven’t actually been promoted in the civilian world. They don’t understand how civilian hiring managers make decisions because they’ve never been one or around one. They’ve never had to justify the additional headcount of another employee. They’ve never done an analysis on the cost of adding a person and the added revenue that person will bring in; whether it is sustainable for the long term because you don’t want to have to fire them 6 months from now. They simply don’t know.

Comforting lies are…well…comforting. Yelling “everything is awesome!” is disingenuous at best, dangerous at worst.

Besides that, getting a job is only the very FIRST step.   Did you know that 44% of veterans leave their first job in the first year?  Did you know that number jumps to 65% by year two?  Why do you think that is?  It happens partly because they haven’t been told what corporate life is like.  No one told them to consider corporate cultures.  No one told them to consider the product, the environment, their own personal desires, where they wanted to live, what is important to their family, what kind of work life balance they are looking for, why they got out and how this job works into that plan, I can go on – I wrote an entire book on the subject and regularly post here about it.  Finding the right fitting job is more important that just finding any job.

Did you know that veteran suicide rates for GWOT veterans are highest in the first 3 years after they get out?

Are you starting to see the picture yet?

Veterans are getting out, hate their jobs,  get in financial trouble, which results in marriage trouble, which leads to substance abuse, and that to suicide.  I’ve talked about this plenty with “break the chain“, and it’s the whole reason I started CONUS Battle Drills.

It does no one any good to talk about finding a job and calling that “transition”.  The equivalent would be to give someone “marriage advice” but only talk about how to plan a wedding.  Then some asshole gets up and starts talking about how you too can have a successful marriage the day he gets back from his honeymoon.  The wedding (or job hunt) is the easiest part of the whole ordeal, but 90% of the “transition” advice I see out there focuses on this small element of transition.  Don’t get me wrong, finding a job is critical, and there are plenty of organizations out there to help you do that, but it is NOT transition.

 

A Successful Transition…..?

This article is more about helping you, the veteran, identify potential pitfalls in your journey of moving into the civilian sector – your transition.

SO…how does a veteran judge themselves as having successfully transitioned? Is there a manual that has standard metrics, benchmarks or specific goals to achieve? One veteran’s perspective of success is wildly different from another. Some veterans want to get out and land a federal job while others want to be managers and executives in corporate America, still others want to work in civil service (police, fireman, teachers, etc.). Some just want to get out and hang out on camp couch under the 1st parents division for a while – however we highly advise that this not be your definition of success. Success is ultimately measured by the individual, not by other veterans or transition assistance “experts” metrics of success. There is no such thing a “successful” transition because success is measured differently from one person to the next.

Furthermore, a veteran never transitions out of the military, they learn how to meld their military and civilian lives together. NOBODY, not even the veteran themselves can ignore their military past. A transition by definition is process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another. A veteran isn’t changing from military to civilian; they blend and harmonize the two.

As noted earlier, it is a never ending process and a constant review of your adjustment in the non-military world. The question you should always be asking yourself is “How am I leveraging my experiences in the military to advance my post-military journey.” There is a process that business’ across the spectrum use to analyze themselves to plot their grow – it’s called the Deming Cycle.

  • Plan: Forward moving steps to include points of reference to measure your success (i.e completing a class, earning a degree, getting hired, getting a promotion, etc.) – be it short term, long term, or some where in the middle
  • Do: Implement the plan you developed
  • Check: The progress of your plan to see if your meeting the measurement points – it’s alright if you fall short; the key is you made some goals to achieve.
  • Act: On the review of the plan, identify what went well and what didn’t and, take the lessons learned back into the planning phase.

This cycle is a never ending, always repeating process of improvement. Some times the iteration is short and sometimes it is long. Either way the idea is to make goals and points of reference to measure yourself by so that you can adjust and steer your own personal ship (i.e your post-military journey).

I say again, Transition isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be hard.  Don’t fool yourself into thinking that it’s over once you get a job.

Finally, for those of you struggling out there: you’re not alone.  The majority of veterans have gone through this as well.  You can do this.

-LJF & BY

 

For more information on transition, get the highly rated book on Amazon:

For the love of sheep?

“Tend my sheep.”
-John 21

Ever wonder why there seems to be so much tension between veterans and civilians?

Just scroll through some of the comments posted on “when a civilian says” memes and you will see just how real and deep that tensions run.

I do NOT believe that veterans are the sole party to blame for the rift between veterans and civilians but I will say that I think it is mainly our fault.  Admittedly, I hold veterans to a higher standard.  Maybe I am old school when I think that being a “quiet professional” actually means first being a “professional” at something and you don’t “beat your own chest” and seek out favors, attention, or credit.

The purpose of this post is to challenge veterans to think differently about civilians in general so that you may live among them better and maybe even grow to respect them.  In order to that, I am going to revisit the popular analogy of Sheep, Sheepdogs, and Wolves by LTC Dave Grossman, U.S. Armed (ret), to help make my point.

LTC Grossman describes the average civilian as sheep, military personnel and police officers as sheepdogs, and those that threaten our way of life as wolves. His analogy has turned into a widely embraced description in the Law Enforcement and military communities. Police and Veterans wear the ‘sheepdog’ title like a badge of honor (most of the time, they deserve too).

In an era when ‘over valorizing’ veterans is a legit discussion, it is even more important for us to look a little deeper into this topic. Sheepdogs are, as we all know, a part of the canine family. Which means by simple genetic make up they are more like the wolves than the sheep. They are more like the attacker than they are with the ones they are defending!

So what would be the ‘thing’ that differentiates the two animals? I suggest that the only practical difference is “domestication.” Both dog and wolf might salivate at the sight of a grazing animal and see it as a potential meal but only one will act out on that instinct, the other will deny its carnal desire.

I left the service and went into agriculture as mentioned in earlier blogs. On my small family farm every animal has its place. Each animal serves a specific purpose or it is removed. So, for me, it is very simple. If I have a certain livestock, such as cattle or sheep, on my farm, they are the “producers” that everything else revolves around. Dogs (sheepdogs, canines, etc.) are additions to that “producing” endeavor.  They are a support element, not a ‘”pet.”  All the animals are fed, housed, and loved the same…..for doing different, particular, and necessary jobs.

Protective dogs are intended to watch over the livestock and run off any potential attacker to the herd, flock, or whatever. They are NOT superior in any way (despite my own endearment of them) and they do not have free reign to do as they wish. I am confident that any farmer or rancher would say that he or she would put down “any” dog on their farm that attacked their livestock. It is unacceptable behavior.

Thus, a well domesticated dog, understands its role and place on the farm. That particular dog or dogs has the discipline to resist certain instincts (the same that the wolf has) to harm the ‘sheep.’ To the point where that dog will do battle against the wolves or any other outside animal that threatens the herd.

Military personnel and police offers must realize that we are not above the sheep/civilians we protect. In fact, the opposite is true. They are the ‘thing’ of worth in our country. They are the ‘producers,’ not us. We have a role to play for sure and it is a noble one! We are intended to stop and remove threats so that they can go on producing. Respect their role as much as your own.

As for those of you who are like me, who have left the military or the police force to become civilians yourself; take a second longer to realize that you aren’t in your previous role anymore. Sure, you can talk about your glory days and how you ‘were’ different but your mental energy will probably be better spent getting to know your new family and communicating with them. It is time for you to ‘produce’ something other than ‘defense’ and if you want to do that efficiently then you might want to eat some humble pie and learn from those who have been doing it already.

I would challenge veterans and suggest that if you embrace your new fleece and understand the importance of their role and your new role in our ‘herd of countrymen’ you might actually grow to love them.

As for you civilians who are reading this: manage your expectations of veterans. We will always have a slightly different walk and attitude about us. We are all trying hard to be a part of the fold but it doesn’t always come so naturally for us.

I struggle with loving civilians myself sometimes. But reminding myself of little things like the fact that my wife, daughter, and son are civilians/sheep helps bring it home for me. My wife is tougher than I am in so many ways and I am still proudly learning how to be a better me, from her, to this day.

-CWS

 

Click the image below to find out what we’re doing here at CONUS Battle Drills!

file_000-1

You hired a veteran, but how do you keep him?

According to a survey by VetAdvisor and Syracuse university, a full 65% of veterans leave their first civilian job within two years.  Usually at CONUS Battle Drills we focus on how the veteran can improve their position, but in this case, I want to send a shout out to folks out there hiring veterans and give them some tips.

At first glance, that statistic can deter you from even considering hiring a vet because of the costs of turnover, but there are some significant benefits that these people bring that make them excellent employees.  They are disciplined, on time, courageous, leaders with integrity and incredible work ethic.  They will accomplish tasks at what seems like impossible timelines, and they aren’t afraid to give you bad news, two qualities that are exceptionally rare in the civilian world.  They are fiercely loyal and if they have a problem you can be sure they will tell you about it…and bring a solution as well. I strongly believe you should always look at the veteran community when making hiring decisions for all these reasons, but you have to control that turnover rate.

Make a Career Plan

Before I had even pinned on my Lieutenant bars, I knew what my career would look like from my first platoon leader time all the way to retirement and the key jobs in between.  I could set career goals early on and work to achieve those goals.  Every move I made was calculated towards achieving those goals.  This is something that is greatly lacking in the civilian workplace.  For years I asked my superiors and mentors to no avail, all they ever said is “there is no real path”.  Turns out this wasn’t exactly true.   By picking up little bits of information as I went along, I was able to determine some key jobs titles that I would need to move forward.  So if you have hired a veteran, you need to have a career path of some sorts planned out for them, or be ready to give them some tips and key positions in their advancement.  The job they are in can’t look like a dead end and they need to know that there are future challenges ahead, this will keep them excited.

It also helps to know salary ranges with responsibilities.  For some reason human resources departments try and keep this information top secret which I have never understood.  The lowest private can see what his commander makes every month, and he can look at those salaries and make a determination where he wants his career to go. We come from a place where everyone wears their pay grade and qualifications on their chest, and we can all see how much the other guy makes.  The secrecy with which civilians deal with pay grades and salaries makes no sense, but I don’t want to fight for a promotion or a position if the pay isn’t worth the sacrifice in my opinion, and it’s better to know that before getting the job.

Training

The dismal on-boarding process that I have observed in many civilian companies is incredibly frustrating.  When the military takes someone on, they spend months training them to be a soldier, then more months training them in their initial entry job, then as they get promoted, there are other schools and training they have to go through in order to pin on the next rank.  When they aren’t deployed, they are training, train, train, train, train, train.  Civilians are terrible at training.  If you want to get the most out of the veteran you just hired and experience all the benefits I outlined early on, you have to train them how to do the job; a week of safety presentations and powerpoints is not it.

One way to develop a training plan is to list out the qualities that you are looking for in the job that you are hiring for.  What skills does this person need to have?  What programs do they need to know?  Who do they need to meet?  List those things out and give them to your veteran with a plan on how to have them “certified” in every item within the first 3 months.  This will provide a goal and help you work with them as they integrate.

Establish a Veteran Community

Hopefully this isn’t your first veteran hire, so there should be other folks in your company that have successfully made this transition.  We don’t usually shout from the rafters about our service, so you typically have to get to know us to find out that we have worn the uniform.  As a hiring manager, I assume you know the people around you and can introduce your new veteran hire to some senior veterans in your organization.  I can’t tell you how important this is.  There are questions that your veteran has about the differences between civilian life and the military that you are not prepared to answer.  Meeting someone else also establishes a support network of like-minded individuals.  Many of the questions your veteran has, someone else in your organization has already struggled through.

During our entire time in service, we always had a buddy.  One other man who had our back and we were accountable to each other.  We looked after each other’s gear and health.  We grew up in that world, and entering a different world where our jokes don’t make sense and we don’t have anyone out there looking out for us can feel very lonely.  This is going to decrease job satisfaction, and if there doesn’t seem to be a good career path and we have no idea what we’re doing because we haven’t been trained, then we’re going to find another job.  So establish a veteran community and some way of putting these veterans in contact with each other.

Even after you do all these things, you might still lose some veterans, don’t take it personal.  One of the four big questions I am always telling folks getting out is, “Do you know what you want to do?”  Too many folks get out without answering that question and some honestly don’t know.  Maybe they think they can leave the adrenaline junky job behind but find out after a year or two behind a desk that they can’t find joy in their life without chasing bad guys.  That’s on them, but if you want to take that 65% turnover rate and drop it into the single digits, you need to Have a Career Path, Make a Training Plan, and Establish a Veteran Community.

-LJF

 

Click the image below to find out what we’re doing here at CONUS Battle Drills!

file_000-1