Military operations and Business operations

Well, I decided to pen this piece when i was surfing for some business schools on the net. Everyone wanted an essay and the admission process would include a grilling interview too. Considering my experience in the Army, i would have to make an introspection into what all transferable skills i would be bringing to the corporate world. And also, i would have to give a thought of the sector in which i would be placing myself after an MBA. The most common word in the military is "operation" and all officers are trained to plan, prepare and conduct ops and deliver results which, i am in no doubt would also be the norm in the corporate world. So hail wikipedia, i ran a search and came across many similarities to the way we conduct ops in the military and the ones in civil life. So finally i have decided to go into some kind of a corporte designation that deals with business operations. And here i will be bringing out the similarities. Read on...

Military operations is the application of policy, planning, management, and administration principles in employment of military forces and resources (for example in a Military campaign) in daily formation and unit activities to achieve a specific goals or objectives. It involves the planning, mobilization of forces, the intelligence process of collecting, analyzing and disseminating of information, allocating resource and determining time requirements.
A military operation can involve the carrying out of a strategic or operational manoeuvre through management of logistic movement of forces. In the process of carrying out the operation the forces may require provision of services, training, or administrative functions to allow them to commence, continue and end combat. This would include supplying of the troops with food and water (Afterall, the army marches on its stomach, as Napolean said once), the equipment to fight namely the guns and the ammo, planning where to, when to and how to execute things, And at the end of it capturing the objective or annihilating/routing the enemy...

Most military operations have distinct process features that must reach achieved milestones for the operation to progress. These processes when related to the corporate campaigns boils down to the following:

Conception through identification of specific goals or objectives

Identification of a specific product or a venture that would bring in more revenues to the corporate organisation and deciding on launching it.

Intelligence gathering and analysis to identify enemy capability to resist

Gathering information through survey and stuff (Easier in the corporate sense coz durng war, one cant conduct surveys on the enemy dispositon by asking the enemy) and by employing a network of informers (The "foot soldiers" who conduct the survey) and the analysis of how the consumer/customer would like the product and the identification of rivals in the market and the tactics that may be used by the rival to counter own product.

Planning of military force and its use

Planning of the offensive which includes minor details... Say u are launching a branded umbrella. People buy more umbrellas during the rains than the summers. So launching the umbrella during the rainy season would see more people buying it. Things like this kept in mind, launching an advertising campaign of sorts (Which is popularly called winning hearts and minds aka WHAM operations in a counter insurgency role where u sell to the public the fact that the army is deployed to help them rather than trouble them). And say how u are going to market the umbrella...

Administration of mobilisation, equipping, training and staging of forces

This is basically the co-ordination of all things reqd to keep the initiative going. How u will take the salesman and the umbrella to the stores(mobilisation of resources), how u are going to display ur wares on the window(equipping), how the salesman at the shop is going to make the customer buy it(training) and so on.

Commencement of the operation, and achieving of initial tactical mission objectives

The product being launched with much fanfare and publicity so that it reaches into the minds of all... The initial costs of the operation being met by the sales and the minimum profit levels being raked in from the venture.

Defeating the larger enemy forces in their operational depth

By making the umbrella more attractive and making more people buy it, thereby the competitor going out of business.

Exploitation of success and Ending the operation

The umbrella has hit the market and has made huge profits thankfully due to the rains. Well, what next? The brand name of Anbu & co is in the minds of the consumer. So launch raincoats the next rainy season to keep up the tempo of the brand.

So at the end of it all, the skills one picks up in the Army can be used by any corporate. i have missed out on many things here as i have not introspected in detail. Also coz i dont know much about how things work outside the Army. So it gives a stronger reason to earn an MBA. Also dear reader, pls excuse me for the use of improper business terms coz i have just used common sense and not business sense in writing this.

Fear

Help me O god when death is near
To mock the haggard face of fear
That when i fall, if fall i must
My soul may triumph in the dust.

Everybody has fear of something or the other. Infact, somebody who doesn't feel fear is either trying to be Rambo or just a psycho freak who needs to consult a pschologist. But the steel in a man is not displayed in the fact he does not feel it... But in the way he acts in the face of fear. He mocks the haggard face of fear...