We can learn a lot from our veterans, especially about how we lead.
Veterans Day is Wednesday. Most of us will say “thank you for your service,” and we should. This year I want to go one step further. I want to write down the military leadership lessons that changed how I run a team, because the people who taught them to me deserve the credit.
Where I Learned to Lead
I’ve been in tech since 2002. I started at Geek Squad, helping people pick out routers. Today I’m the CTO of Colossal, a service-disabled veteran-owned company in Annapolis. Along the way, I’ve spent years working alongside military operators and veterans.
I’ve read a lot of leadership books. Most of what actually works, I learned from them.
So here are four military leadership lessons. None of them require a uniform. All of them work on Monday morning.
Lesson 1: Own It
Former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink calls it extreme ownership. The idea is simple. When something goes wrong, the leader looks in the mirror first. Not at the team. Not at the vendor. Not at the weather.
It sounds simple. It is not easy. Every instinct tells you to explain why it wasn’t your fault. Ownership asks you to skip that part.
What Ownership Sounds Like
It sounds like this: “That one’s on me. Here’s how we fix it.”
Watch what happens when the person in charge says that out loud. The blame stops. The fixing starts. And the people around you begin to own their part too, because you made it safe to. Ownership spreads through a team the same way blame does. The leader decides which one spreads.
What Ownership Is Not
Ownership is not taking the fall for everything and then fixing it all yourself. That’s a different problem, and I wrote about it in my post on executive burnout. Ownership means you’re responsible for the outcome. It doesn’t mean you do all the work.
Lesson 2: Review Everything
The Army has a tool called the after-action review. It’s one of the best learning tools ever built, and it’s only four questions long:
- What was supposed to happen?
- What actually happened?
- Why was there a gap?
- What do we do next time?
That’s the whole thing. We run these at Colossal after every major project and every big incident. No blame. No finger-pointing. Just learning.
Why Most Teams Skip It
Most teams finish a project and sprint to the next one. Nobody stops to ask what happened. As a result, they make the same mistake three times and call it bad luck.
The review works because of the rule that comes with it: no blame. The moment a review turns into a trial, people stop telling the truth, and you stop learning. I covered more tools like this in my guide to executive decision making under pressure.
It Works at Home Too
Try it after Thanksgiving. What was supposed to happen? Dinner at four. What actually happened? Dinner at six thirty. Why was there a gap? Somebody forgot to thaw the turkey. What do we do next time? We thaw the turkey.
Ten minutes. Four questions. Better next year.
Lesson 3: Give Intent, Not Instructions
Navy Captain David Marquet took command of one of the worst-performing submarines in the fleet. He turned it around by doing something that sounds backwards. He stopped giving orders. He tells the story in Turn the Ship Around!
Instead of instructions, he gave his crew intent. Here’s the goal. Here’s why it matters. You figure out how.
The Myth of Barking Orders
People assume the military runs on barking orders. However, the best military leaders do the opposite. They make sure everyone understands the mission well enough to make the right call when the boss isn’t in the room. In the field, the boss is often not in the room.
General Stanley McChrystal did the same thing at a much larger scale with special operations. He changed how decisions flowed, and operating tempo went up 17 times. Same people. Different design. I broke that down in my post on decision architecture.
The Test for Your Team
Here’s a simple test. If you disappeared for two weeks, what would stop? If the answer is “everything,” that’s not loyalty. That’s a bottleneck, and you built it.
At Colossal, my engineers know exactly when to handle something themselves and when to bring me in. That clarity took work. It’s also what lets a team move fast without waiting on one person.
Lesson 4: Stay Calm on Purpose
Calm is not a personality trait. It’s a skill, and it can be trained.
One tool I learned from working alongside military operators is box breathing. Breathe in for four seconds. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four. It takes about a minute, and it gives your brain time to get out of panic mode and back to thinking.
The Night I Needed It
It was 11:47 on a Tuesday night. My phone lit up. A critical system for one of our biggest customers had gone down. The client was furious. My team was scrambling. I had about thirty minutes to make a call that could cost us a contract worth millions.
My heart rate spiked. Every option felt wrong. What got me through that night wasn’t talent. It was training.
Your Team Takes Its Temperature From You
If you panic, they panic. If you’re steady, they’re steady. And here’s the catch. The tool only works if you practice it before the crisis, not during. Nobody learns to breathe in the middle of the fire.
What These Military Leadership Lessons Have in Common
Own it. Review everything. Give intent, not instructions. Stay calm on purpose.
Notice that not one of them is about being the smartest person in the room. They’re about being the most responsible one. That’s the part of military leadership civilians tend to miss. It isn’t about rank or volume. It’s about who carries the weight when things go wrong, and who makes sure the team can carry on without them.
Showing Up for the People Who Taught Us
Veterans gave us more than leadership lessons. A lot of them are still carrying the weight of their service.
Last month, Colossal hosted our seventh annual 22ForYou Day at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis. Every hour, on the hour, we dropped and did 22 push-ups to raise money and awareness for Mission 22 and the fight against veteran suicide. By the afternoon, push-up number 22 feels very different than it did at nine in the morning. But that’s the point. You keep showing up. Over the years, the event has raised more than a million dollars.
If you’re a veteran and you’re struggling, or you love someone who is, the Veterans Crisis Line is 988, then press 1. Make the call. That’s not weakness. That’s ownership.
Your Homework This Week
Three things.
Take ownership of one thing, out loud. Do it in front of your team or your family. “That one’s on me.”
Run one after-action review. Four questions, ten minutes, no blame.
On Wednesday, don’t just thank a veteran. Ask about their service, and then listen. And if you’re hiring, hire one. You’ll get someone who already knows everything in this post.
To every veteran reading this, thank you.
Lead. Learn. Lift.
I talked through these lessons on Working Out CxO on GTV FOX 5 Plus. My book, Practical AI for the Rest of Us, is at practicalaibook.ai.
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