https://www.theinformationcompany.se/leadership-experience-from-the-military-part-1/

My name is Jan Eldeblad and I will share my experiences of leadership on this blog – experiences that I’ve gained through directly leading teams as well as from executive leadership of thousands of individuals in both a national and an international environment. Even though I’ve worked in a military context, I do believe that my experiences are applicable to similar challenges in other fields as well.

Currently I’m stationed at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, between North and South Korea, which contrary to its name is the world’s most heavily militarized border. On one side you have a prospering South Korea, with Seoul as its motor and a strategic area where all the large nations are trying to position themselves for the future. But here you also have the 160 mile de facto border where both countries are armed to the teeth, ready to attack each other.

Prior to this I served as Head of Operations of a European Union rapid reaction force, which was under Swedish responsibility. This force consisted of 2200 individuals from 6 different countries and after build-up we could be deployed to missions all over the world within a couple days of notice. A very interesting experience!

My main experience of leadership is that it’s all about a wheel consisting of Planning,Execution and Assessment.

Planning helps to simplify an abstract environment, make it understandable and describe what I can/wish to achieve from the task in hand. The planning must be done and described so that those individuals who will perform the task understand what is asked of them – in other case the identified plans have just been a waste of time. By planning, you can identify the information needs that are necessary for decision making and execution. A key here is the connection between the time of information gathering and the time of decision making. If an organization makes sure to gather the information needed for decision making in time, it will be able to make more proactive decisions instead of reacting to events or simply just guessing.

In part 2, I will give a more detailed discussion about my views on planning.