Episode 22: Blue Cord Blues: Embracing the Unforeseen

Description

You can’t always get what you want, but it’s often said that you get what you need. Whether it be your role in the forces, or a business deal about to be secured, being let down by an expectation can feel devastating. In this episode of Veteran Led, John Berry gives us an inside look on his early days in the military, and how he was left disappointed by holding certain hopes and expectations about the role he would secure. John will use examples from his career to show that sometimes life has other plans, but with patience and perseverance, the right opportunity will come.

Transcript

John Berry
Welcome fellow veterans. From the tip of the spear to in the rear with the gear, I went from active-duty Infantry to reserve-component logistician. I’m your host, CEO, entrepreneur, trial lawyer, and Lieutenant Colonel Retired, John Berry. The military lessons that I learned helped me grow an eight-figure business that has maintained consistent annual double-digit growth, landing on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America every year for the past seven years, and has allowed me to continue to serve America’s heroes.

John Berry
Welcome to episode 22, How I Lost My Blue Cord.

John Berry
Life, like our military careers, doesn’t always go as planned. It’s important that we set goals, and we plan for our future, but we also have to accept that not everything will turn out the way that we think it will. I decided I wanted to become an army officer when I was in college. I was playing football or rather riding the bench. I was injured, and I was going to have to take a year off. And at that point, I realized I wanted to do something between college and law school, and I wanted to become an airborne ranger. And it was contrary to all the training I’d been doing.

John Berry
I had been trying to gain weight for the past several years, eating six meals a day, worried about my sprinting speed, not doing any long-distance training. It took me a year to lose a lot of the bulk and to get my two-mile time below 12 minutes. Back then, the standard max, the army physical fitness test was 11:54 on the two-mile for the 18 to 22-year-old range, and I was going to do that. Now, let’s go back to the blue cord. Any infantry qualified soldier serving in an Infantry Unit, wears a blue cord on their Class A uniform on the right shoulder. Now, when I graduated from Infantry Officer Basic course, they had a blue cord ceremony. It was a big deal. After deferring law school for three years, I decided that I would go into the reserve component and start law school. As I transitioned, I went back to Nebraska, met with a CAB battalion commander who told me that I could become his Scout platoon leader. I signed up, I transferred to the National Guard, enrolled in law school. And when I showed up, I was told by the G-1 that, Well, that position has been filled.

John Berry
You’re going to be an aid to camp for the general. Great. I showed up in my first drill, and a sergeant major told me, Well, the general, he has a full-time aid to camp, doesn’t really need you. But why don’t you come with me? We’re going to the firing range. On the ride to the firing range, a sergeant major told me, said, Look, sir, you came from active duty. We’re a reserve component, and we are team, too. We do things a little bit differently here. Now, keep in mind, this is pre a 911 reserve component. And when we got to the range, it was a little bit different. It was much more relaxed. When I got to the range, I ran into an infantry Company Commander who told me that there were plenty of Company Commands slots for Infantry Officers. Fortunately, there was a New Mexico Military Institute graduate who graduated a few years prior to me who was in the G1. I asked him, I said, How do I do this? And he said, Well, here’s the thing. The Infantry Brigade is actually going away. We’re going to become an area support group. So I’m just going to tell you, don’t worry about being an Infantry Company Commander.

John Berry
You need to worry about branch transferring. You need to become a logistician. I’m like, What? You need to decide whether you want to be Ordinance or Quartermaster or Transportation. Now, since Fort Justus was about 10 minutes from College of William and Mary, I decided I would become a transportation officer. I went to the transportation school and became transportation qualified. Then they told me, Well, you need to become a 90 Alpha. I’m like, What’s that? They said, Well, that’s a multifunctional logistician. You need that. So I went to the school for that. Now, meanwhile, I’m in law school, and I got out of law school shortly thereafter, and I had a Company Command for a couple of years, and I was really struggling. I got a Company Command, in the reserve component. I’m a new lawyer, and I’m working with my father, who really just wants to retire at this point. I go to my commander after a couple of years, said, Look, sir, I’ve been in command for a couple of years. My commitment is coming up. I think that after this command, I think I’m going to hang it up. And he said, Well, John, I realize you’re under a lot of stress right now.

John Berry
You have a lot going on. The good news is that’s all going to change. I said, Oh, really? He said, Yeah, your company is deploying to Iraq. You will be the Company Commander. And so you don’t even have to worry about the civilian stuff for a while. For those of you that are business owners who have deployed, you know exactly what was going through my head. At that point, I’m like, Oh, great. What’s going to happen with the business? I also, at the had a four-month-old daughter. So I have all these thoughts going through my head. But I will tell you that the deployment was probably one of the better things that happened to me. Instead of worrying about being a lawyer and the business and all the mundane tasks that we have to get through in our daily lives, all I had to worry about was the mission, taking care of my team. Now, the downside was I wasn’t going as an infantry soldier. No, I was going as a logistician. In ’99, when I went to Bosnia as part of an infantry company, we made fun of the reserve component. And the reserve component logisticians were even worse.

John Berry
We called them REMFs, and that stands for a rear Echelon MF. I was now the REMF. This wasn’t why I went into the military. I wanted to be the Infantry Company Commander outside the wire, but here I am, the logistician who was inside the wire for most of the deployment. And coming to terms with that was not easy. I went from being the tip of the spear to quite literally being in the rear with the gear. In some ways, it was embarrassing, especially when talking to my buddies who were still serving in Infantry Units. So I took a lot of flak for it, but at the end of the day, my job is to lead soldiers. And leading is leading. And one of the other challenges we face as military leaders is we do not spend our entire careers in command. You don’t get to be a Company Commander for 20 years. You go from Company Commander to Battalion Staff. And then when you’re on staff, you’re not in command anymore, and in fact, the leadership challenge can be even more complex because not only do you still have a boss that you’re working for, but your success or failure depends a lot more on your peers than your subordinates when you’re at the staff level.

John Berry
You have to be able to work with the other staff officers to be able to collaborate, to get projects done, and to work together in a way that accomplishes the mission and moves the egos out of the way. The skills it takes to lead and to follow are different than the skills required to be a great peer, to be a great team player with those peers who a lot of times you’re competing against for the next position, for that one block on the OER. It’s difficult to establish great relationships and be competitive but also be fiercely loyal to your peers. And I know you’ve seen it, some of the backstabbing that happens at the staff level, people getting thrown under the bus, the old last minute email trick where, oh, I sent you that email. I sent you that information. And I saw that happen in other organizations. Fortunately, I didn’t see a lot of it in our organization, we had a tight staff. We had a team where peers reached out and made sure that the team was taken care of because we played the long game. We understood that we were all in this together, and that in the military, we run into each other down the road, and that’s just the way it works.

John Berry
And so the Blue Falcons on the staff generally, generally felt the pain from that down the road. Although we can all talk about the Blue Falcon who became the commander or who got the promotion that they didn’t deserve. But once again, life doesn’t turn out the way we expect it to. And I found myself without my Blue Cord and not serving as an infantry officer. And while I felt bad about it, the other thing I realized is that I came off active duty before September 11th. I was just fortunate to be there, to be able to serve in a time of war, to be able to serve my country after the terrorist attack and be able to do something about it. And so from the perspective of, well, gee, I didn’t get to wear the Blue Cord, but man, I got the opportunity to serve post-911, and that wouldn’t have happened if I wouldn’t have stayed in the reserve component. And had I not branch transferred, I would not have been in. So the decision to stay in, even though I didn’t get what I wanted, got me a great opportunity. I didn’t earn a combat infantryman’s badge.

John Berry
I didn’t even earn a combat action badge. But I had the great honor and opportunity to deploy during a time of war and command soldiers in a warzone, and the lessons are invaluable. As leaders, we get unexpected opportunities to lead that may not be exactly the opportunity that we thought we wanted, but they’re still valuable. I understand that my revenue-generating team members, my team members on the front lines, want to spend their time working on cases, preparing for trial. They don’t want to get caught up in all the administrative minutia. And I understand when they complain and say, Hey, you need to get Karen off my back. I don’t need to hear about my celebration survey being late. On the other hand, having worked in the rear with the gear, I also understand the value of the administrative team and how they can make the front lines more efficient and how vital they are to the success of the entire organization. And having these experiences and understanding both perspectives has made me a better leader, even though I didn’t get to be on the front the whole time like I thought it was going to be, like the opportunity that I thought I wanted.

John Berry
You can’t scale without the administrative support. On the other hand, if you have too much administrative support and the tail is wagging the dog, you will not generate enough revenue on the front lines for your team to succeed. And so the entire team has to be aligned that we support the revenue-generating arm of the business, but every single aspect of the support team is important to the success of the entire team. In conclusion, I lost my the blue cord when I transferred to the reserve component and became a logistician. However, the experiences I gained were invaluable. And in life and in business, you may be placed in positions that are not comfortable or are different than what you expected, but you still have to be a team player. And I have seen leaders fail where they cannot be the team player in a different role. We need to be like chameleons. The leadership attributes that we have that make us successful in one position will allow us to fail in others. There’s the old saying about the wartime commander and the garrison commander, and that sometimes the wartime commander, the battle commander, can be successful in battle, but fail in garrison and vice versa.

John Berry
The reality is in business, you got to be ready for both. You have to be the boss, the commander, the CEO that the team needs when it needs you. And that means you have to be ready for everything. You have to understand the importance of serving on the front lines. You also have to understand the importance of the role that the people do in the rear with the gear that make everything happen. So as a leader, while losing my blue cord personally hurt my ego, it was one of the better things that happened to me because it forced me to develop. It forced me to develop new skills and new perspectives.

John Berry
After Action Review. Number one, just because things didn’t turn out like they planned doesn’t mean they can’t turn out great. Number two, take advantage of every opportunity to develop, even if it’s not the opportunity that you thought you wanted. Number three, every experience counts. Three down. Number one, leaders are leaders regardless of the capacity in which they serve, regardless of their branch. Number two, have gratitude for your opportunity to serve. I was grateful that I got the chance to command a company in the post-911 army.

John Berry
Number three, it’s not about you. Put your ego aside. When you’re a leader, it’s about the team and doing what’s in the best interests of the entire organization.

John Berry
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting veteran leadership in business, strengthening the veteran community, and getting veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching @veteranled on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments. We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Led.