The Bull in the China Shop

Learning from my failures in transition from warrior tribe to the corporate tribe.

June 11th, 2010 was hot, arid, and generally dusty on the west side of Fort Worth, Texas. A normal Friday by any Texas standard. The Naval Air Station, Joint Reserve Base was calm if not without the usual flight operations with random Marine F/A-18 Hornets, and Air Guard F-16's booming overhead. The sound of jet noise, deployment work ups, 15hr sweat soaked days, daily flight schedules, maintenance meetings, and tool box checks were all about to become things of the past. It was my time to leave the Marine Corps. Was I ready for the world outside? No, I wasn't. Did I know it at the time? No, I didn't.

Fast forward a few years through the back-to-school realities, unemployment struggles, a brief 3yr career in professional politics, and finally the culmination by landing squarely in a promising startup in Dallas. We worked in a broom closet. Well, to be fair, it was a converted broom closet in a reworked industrial space in Dallas' Design District but suffice to say it was cramped quarters. There were four of us, originally, smashed together and only one of us with a paycheck! The business was scrappy in the beginning, and we all wore at least four or five hats throughout the day to get things done. Its difficult to explain unless you've started a business, or have at least been through a startup phase of a project where literally everything you do is for the good of the team and generally immediate value is seen and recognized. Putting out fires, generating content, scheduling photo shoots, replying to customer service tickets, calling potential customers, tracking shipments, doing stock checks, and anything else you could possibly imagine was really just a day-to-day grind for us. It was heaven!

Where it all started to change color, if you will, was in the growth faze. New personalities coming in, older personalities making their presence known, and the boundaries being drawn. Territorialization, if you want to put a name on it. While this may be a normalizing aspect in the everyday civilian sector I can assure you it is not for most of us who come from the military, especially the Marine Corps. We thrive on a certain social structure that is unwavering, and a tenure/meritocracy system that gives us plenty of room to know where each dog runs in the pack, and why. We come from an environment where nearly all of our peers are "absolute alpha" personalities; meaning that essentially your entire workplace would be a bunch of Type-A star quarterbacks who all think our way is best, that we know what the hell is going on, and you're going to listen to what we have to say. When you think about it in plain terms it sounds like a nightmare. In reality though, that's just how we've been constructed to accept the world around us, and in a way that's okay. It is not okay, however, when you're the only one who displays these attributes and everyone else is staring at you like a bunch of layman staring at thesis on String Theory.

To put it into a clearer perspective: when we were in the military we knew the way things were because there's a reason for everything. My job existed to support the men and women in direct ground combat and win battles. That was it. Hard stop. In comparison, it wasn't so that we could have discussions on human resources training plans, take mental health days, or book time on each other's daily schedules to go over last quarter's earnings alignment per channel. We did our jobs because the man or woman next to us depended on us to do it because lives we on the line. Being overly obvious: this mentality DOES NOT exist in a CPG start up! While there may be helpful attributes at times, its safe to say that an apparel brand doesn't need its team leaders to be ready to go anywhere in the world on 24hrs notice ready to do battle.

As things progressed it became more and more apparent I wasn't as prepared for all things cometh as I'd anticipated; namely the understanding of where, how, and why the team needed to grow. It goes on. I didn't know that my assertiveness (read as: being blunt) would be interpreted as me being a jerk, or that my willing to express my unadulterated opinion when asked "what do you think?" could be taken as severe personal criticism. While it wasn't always the case, it surely was on more than a few occasions. The list could go on, but the picture should be clear at this point. I was the lead sales rep for the brand reporting to someone who, despite being the absolute best candidate for the position, didn't know how to manage or lead me; what's worse I let them know it by having a "holier than thou" attitude when it came to my work. I was constantly fending off respectful efforts to understand me, and instead taking them as an affront to my work ethic, or even a personal slight. I won't disregard it, I was successful, and maybe even very successful. However what I couldn't do is get out of my own way. That, though, didn't excuse the fact that at this point it wouldn't have mattered if I'd made a billion dollars for the team, I'd have been a billion dollar asshole.

Enter the bull in the china shop.

As the last months of my time there ran down I began to, if ever agonizingly so, realize what the issue at hand was. In my head I was a born leader, I knew what I was doing, and in many ways that was true, but it didn't matter. I couldn't find a way interpret my learnings, experiences, ideas, and determination into a language that the others could understand clearly. To top it off I then had three team members looking to me for leadership, to set the example, and how to guide them in how to get things done. Was I going to be able to do this so that they could follow in my footsteps, increase their own success, and grow the company as a whole? As much as it hurts to say it, at the time, no I wasn't. Thankfully they all grew into their own and hand-built each of their own successes within the brand; all of which I am damn proud of.

A couple of months prior my departure I had a long evening (and several glasses of whiskey) with the founder of the brand, who happened to be a dear friend and colleague of mine. I told him I was there to listen and to understand, and he told me exactly what I needed to hear. It was harsh. It was dirty, and however internally upset I was at the time I was thankful.

We tried a few different combinations of getting things to work but ultimately I decided it was best to step back from the role and take on another opportunity outside the company. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done, employment-wise. I'd put almost 2yrs of my life into this company, countless nights and weekends, constant cross-country travel, missed important life events, and so on and so fourth. In the end, having not done so I'd never have been able to learn what I have. The sun had set for me there, but it also rose once more for me somewhere else. I was all the better for it.

This is the crux of so many of us (veterans & retirees) coming back to the workplace, and reintegrating back to a (so-called) normal life. Truth be told, they say that when we come back the world is somehow different. In reality it couldn't be further from the truth. We're different. We see the world through a different lens. For better or worse its up to us as new individuals to determine how we're going to use that viewpoint to focus on future efforts in our workplaces. We must listen more intently to the world around us, gain that ever vital spacial awareness, and engage our personal intellect to make sound decisions. Its far from easy, and everyone's situation is different to a degree. However, we can all learn from each other and be there for one another just the way it was in uniform. I can say for a fact that today's workplace is far better off with our warrior's mindset, but it could certainly do without the warrior attitude.

I haven't stopped thinking about the lessons I've learned from this, and I've tried many times, successfully I'm happy to say, to help others similarly caught in their own quagmires such as my own. I've poured my heart into this piece and opened up far more than I'd anticipated. It hurt to be honest, but I'm glad to have done it. I can only hope that others can learn from my mistakes and use it as a tool to make their lives, and those they work with, a little better. Cheers -JL (Corporal, USMC, 06-10)