3 Things I Learned Innovating with Combat Veterans
Courage, risk, and fear aren’t words I thought I would be writing about work. Going from the startup world to the world of defense innovation, however, these concepts have stood out to me as a way to explain the differences between two cultures, who so desperately need to communicate with one another.
A strong appetite for risk is the biggest commonality between entrepreneurs and warfighters. Risk is a requirement for any entrepreneurial endeavor. I’ve seen firsthand the incredible risks Silicon Valley entrepreneurs take to create something new — having spent my formative years at Singularity University then going on to help entrepreneurs build over 100 apps with my first company App Factory, and watching friends found companies that have gone on to raise ~$500M in venture capital.
18 months ago I joined a small company in Palo Alto, owned and operated by U.S. combat veterans, called BMNT. They hired me to bring the tactics I learned from the startup world (UX design, rapid prototyping, and customer development) to tackle national security problems with the US Department of Defense.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far about the overlaps and differences between these two worlds.
1. Fearlessness ≠ Courage
Silicon Valley and the combat arms of the military both have a high concentration of risk takers.
Where their cultures diverge however, I believe, is the difference between fearlessness and courage.
Fearlessness is the inability to recognize things you should be afraid of. As an entrepreneur, fearlessness can be a superpower. You need a bit of naïveté to ‘move fast and break things’ and explore truly uncharted solution spaces. Perhaps that’s why young people thrive in Silicon Valley more than anywhere else in the world.
Fearless people are great fodder for an innovative ecosystem. They take big risks, many will fail, but a few outliers will survive and thrive. These survivors become breakthroughs that keep the ecosystem growing.
In combat, fearless people are a liability. They are prone to reckless actions that endanger the entire unit. When lives are at stake, you can’t afford to overlook the real dangers out there, but you also can’t afford to stand still. You need courage.
Courage is the clear-eyed recognition that there’s a lot you should be afraid of, and fighting anyway. The ability to face your fears is universally difficult (except for fearless people, who don’t experience fear in the same way).
Working with courageous people forced me to wonder: where does their courage come from?
2. High Conscientiousness
One possible explanation; combat vets tend to be high in trait conscientiousness. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness). They’re some of the most reliable, hard-working, and persevering collaborators I’ve ever worked with. The polar opposite of “flaky.”
Conscientiousness is associated with thorough planning and carefulness, which forces you to acknowledge the dangers before you take action.
My theory is that the high concentration of conscientiousness probably comes from basic training (colloquially misnomered as “boot camp” — a term that excludes officer training), which acts as a filter to weed out people with low conscientiousness. But more than a filter, basic training seems to have the ability to build conscientiousness in a person. Talk to a handful of people who have been through it and you’ll hear transformational stories about people who came in with one personality, and left 6 weeks later as a new person.
Now, contrast boot camp to how we onboard employees in Silicon Valley. It’s no wonder the outputs look very different.
3. Skin in the game
Courage also comes from having skin in the game.
Combat vets have more skin in the game than perhaps anyone else in our society. They put their own lives, and the lives of their comrades, into the most threatening environments on earth.
This creates an ‘urgency to act‘ when it comes to problem solving that you don’t see many other places. They deeply care if a solution works or not, because the success or failure can mean life or death.
That said, there’s a lot each side has to gain from this collaboration. The military could greatly expand their innovation efforts by engaging the fearless energy of Silicon Valley. For my creative Silicon Valley friends, if you want to work on extremely interesting and urgent problems that need solving, with a team of courageous people, drop me a note at dgorham@bmntpartners.com — we’re hiring.
