Tales from the other side (How to Civilian Good, Part 1)
Hey friends! It's been a while. I've been fairly busy, immersed in learning my new job and adjusting to life as a civilian. Here's a quick recap of my journey so far:
1) Decided to leave the Army
2) Panic
3) Hunt for job
4) Panic intensifies
5) Find job, start job
6) Profit?
So I've been at my new job for just over 4 months. It has certainly been an eye-opening experience so far, and I've started the process of documenting my experiences and realizations. Think of this series as the other side of the coin to my Transitioning From The Army Series. Now I'm going to see if any of my notions or assumptions were in fact true, what I should have done better on my way out of the Army, and if you're really lucky and read closely, there may even be moderately useful advice.
My first realization is pretty simple: I have no idea what I'm doing. Military officers are a lot like race car drivers' wives - we don't actually DO anything.
I'm starting to like where this blog post is going...
An officer's purpose is to align the resources and capabilities of others with specified skills in order to maximize the organization's efforts and achieve assigned goal. That's leadership 101, right? Now I suddenly find myself as one of those skilled workers (not actually skilled though..) and the adjustment has been odd. Not just in a "this place is new and I am unaccustomed to their ways" sort of odd, but in a genuine "seriously, what the hell am I doing" kind of odd. I'll find myself staring at this massive Excel file, trying to load SQL queries, and realize I don't even know what to type next.
going with a real Ricky Bobby theme on this post, huh?
Of course, I have no one but myself to blame. As an officer, your position is one of a generalized competency, not a specified competency - you're not a welder, translator, or cryptologic linguist. What's that last job? Hell if I know, and I was in charge of a couple of them for the better part of a year. So you're easily lulled into the act of assigning tasks to the most technically competent person in the group, and more often than not, I was the least technically trained person in the group. When I commanded a maneuver unit, I could shoot, perform trauma medicine, or conduct radio operations, but I was never the best within the group at any of those tasks. I didn't need to be. I needed to know how to best employ the man who WAS the best at the task. Now I'm one of the guys that leadership is relying upon to provide tactical level expertise. It's certainly not the first time that I've gone from being a leader to being a follower, but this time the experience in amplified because it's in an entirely new field. I'm simultaneously learning my job while also learning what it means to be a good team member in a corporate environment. It's tough and humbling, asking people younger than myself "how do I do this?" I've found myself frustrated after spending an hour trying to perform a task that my coworkers complete with ease. No matter how many times I get assured that I'm doing a good job and have learned my job quickly, I still get upset that I'm not performing at an excellent level due to the learning curve I face. So I've got some ways to go yet, both in learning my job, and accepting the humility that's involved with leaving a role that I was intimately familiar with to one that I'm new to.
The take away I'd urge those of you about to make the jump from military to civilian is this: You're going to have to take a step or two backwards. It just has to happen, as there's simply no way you'll be able to be as good as you were at your last job in the military at the time you left than you'll be at your new job when you start. I know it seems painfully obviously, and everyone bobs their heads in agreement at such a factual statement. But it's one thing to acknowledge it, an entirely different thing to internalize it. If you're anything like me (and let's face it, if you're still reading my writing, you are), then you're a proud individual who physically gets upset at the thought of sub-par performance. So while you say out loud that you realize who won't be immediately excellent at your first job as a civilian, we both know you don't actually believe it. I'm urging to stop and truly think about it. You need to honestly prepare yourself for the big ol' slice of humble pie you're about to eat. Because recognizing your new position is the first step to quickly moving past it. The more time you spend being upset about your lack of institutional knowledge in your new job, the longer it will take to start kicking butt.
Granted, the amount of steps you take back will vary dependent on what your new job is. If you run a warehouse for the Navy and then get hired to run a warehouse for FedEx, it won't take you too long to ramp up at your next job. I went from the world of Special Operations to online retail, so there's a fairly drastic difference. I'm more along the lines of 3 or 4 steps back instead of 1 or 2 steps.
That's it for the time being. I've got a lot of thoughts brewing in my mind, so hopefully I can start churning out additional entries to the How to Civilian Good series.
Oh yeah, new website. I was tired of the "lifehacking" term, and realized I had zero interest in SEO optimization or using my website as a vehicle for promoting myself, so I'm retiring the fancy site and switching over to a simple wordpress blog.