Suits and Combat Boots: Organizational Lessons from the Military

This hybrid course is designed to provide students with a fresh take on how to marry business strategy to successful tactics, create successful organizational change campaigns, and run engagements that create high impact and value. As we continue to respond to the pandemic and enter a new era of work, it is worth noting that productivity (at least in the US) largely remained steady when the workplace moved into a virtual setting. In some cases, productivity even went up, although there are indications that innovation has dropped, sometimes alarmingly.

Students will learn how to string these tactics into engagements and campaigns critical for innovation and organizational success. Organizational leaders, managers, and change agents will benefit from being clearer in recognizing and leveraging powerful strategies and effective tactics. For example, military theorists differ in their thinking on the meaning of tactics and strategy, with views ranging between a classical, hierarchical view to a postmodern perspective informed by complexity theory. Being able to distinguish between strategy and tactics is a useful lens and will help create more effective organizational change interventions. Making this distinction and planning deliberately to link tactical action and strategic effect is the key to both military adaptability on the complex battlefield, and to achieving organizational performance objectives in a postmodern economy.