Readers Respond: Military Intelligence

An article that appeared in HBSDealer.com under the headline “Military Intelligence: Officers in our ranks,” featured the comments of three industry executives who were formerly officers in the military.

The article solicited comments from other veterans. Here is one from Mike McVay, who has 24 years experience in the U.S. Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserves. His service included deployments in Desert Storm as a Tank Company Executive Officer, Operation Iraqi Freedom as Deployment Support Detachment Commander and Brigade Operations Officer. Retired as a major, he is currently director of sales for Arrow Fastener Company.

He writes:

Lessons Learned

It’s all about effective communications, vertical and lateral, up and down the chain of command. Effective communication multiplies the effectiveness of an organization immensely. Whether coordinating supporting elements on a battlefield, to include multiple branches, foreign nationals and multiple intra branch specialties, effective communication across all platforms in mandatory to organizational success. This holds especially true in corporate organizations, with Finance, Operations, HR, IT, Sales and Marketing. All departments have to work in unison to be successful as a corporation.

Teamwork

There is nothing that instills more confidence, than knowing that your teammates have you covered. If you fail or succeed, you do so as a group. Leaders have absolute trust in subordinates to accomplish missions without micromanagement. In turn, subordinates trust that their leaders have full confidence in them to do so and trust that the task is necessary for unit success. I still stay in close contact with all of my teammates from Desert Storm. Some now retired CSM’s and Col’s. I knew them as privates and lieutenants.

Misconception

I agree with Mr. Cassidy that the misconception of the military is that is an inefficient organization with unlimited resources. On the contrary, the military is a very efficient machine given the scope and scale of all that it is tasked to accomplish.”

-- Mike McVay
Arrow Fastener
Director of sales

Send your comments to [email protected].