Harvard Business: How the Army Prepared Me to Work at Google

By Doug Raymond

Upon learning of my military background, one of my Google team members exclaimed, "You don't seem like an Army guy! It must be so different for you here". His assumption was that an ex-military officer would be more comfortable barking orders to a line of soldiers standing at attention than debating product features with a software development team. Well, he was right in some regards. Google is a very different environment from the tank platoon I led at the beginning of my Army career. We've got better food, a more relaxed dress code, and a very flat organizational structure. However, the leadership qualities that make an Army officer and a leader of an innovative organization successful have a lot in common. What I and many of my fellow ex-military leaders at Google have found is that military leadership experience has prepared us well to succeed in a fast-moving, innovative environment.

Communicate the mission. Officers are often evaluated by how well their soldiers understand the mission of the unit and their role in accomplishing it. In an innovative organization roles are often fluid and only roughly defined, so communication of a vision is even more important. Just as soldiers confront unexpected challenges on the battlefield, employees in innovative companies are faced with hard problems with no well-defined approach to solve them. Google's founders have been particularly effective at challenging us to "organize the world's information" without telling us how to do it. Successful military leaders exhibit a similar ability to define a challenging mission and inspire their troops to believe that they are up to the task of getting it done. (more)