learning from the army

Posted on December 9, 2008

i have been reading a great book, No Excuse Leadership: Lessons from the U.S. Army’s Elite Rangers. make no mistake though, this book is written by soldiers and the f-bomb is riddled within the text. if you can get past that, it is a great source of successes from real life challenges.

during my time in the army, i had faced many challenges that both led to success and some that were not so successful. the picture above (me on the right) was taken on top of one of the buildings during an exercise after a successful taking of a mout site after an all-night patrol. i literally had not slept for two days, had not eaten for almost the same, and knew this specific site was going to be occupied by a highly trained opfor. we expended much of our ammo the night before after shutting down a forward observation camp, so i knew this mission was going to take everything we had in us. after a full day of fighting, the picture was taken after our patrol successfully seized the city with no casualties.

those are the times i reflect back on when i think the challenges of business or personal life are too overwhelming. the work i do at microsoft is both challenging and fulfilling. there are days that i feel i have expended most of my ammo and try to pull together everything i got to execute on my mission.

the challenge both in the army and in real life is that we are often thrown fragos. changes in mission are not the norm, but a well trained individual knows how to execute in times of change and difficulty. it is important not to make excuses for how things change, but to embrace the challenge as an opportunity and make it better. we have many of those at microsoft.

i loved what i did and proud of my time in the army and i am just as proud with the work i do for microsoft. we are a company of great leaders and great contributors and i look forward to all the challenges and successes that lie before me. look for more posts on some of the comparisons i see with the challenges and successes of army life and “real” life.