Business Secrets from the Battlefield to the Boardroom

By Frank Zaccari

This book is a collection of stories from United States military veterans, their spouses, and their parents. It is designed for anyone who has struggled, sacrificed, and dedicated part of their life in service to others while achieving their dream. People who put others before themselves are heroes in every sense of the word. Their stories need

• Language: English
• Publisher: WeBe Books
• Release date: Apr 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781955668552

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Dennis J. Pitocco

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, BizCatalyst 360°

Real stories by people who’ve generously shared what really matters… is simply priceless.

Dennis J. Pitocco

Growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, as one of eight children in a large, happy Italian family, my siblings and I had no prospects for college due to family economics. My dad did the very best he could, working three jobs simply to put food on the table and clothes on our backs. Looking forward to what the future held beyond high school graduation, my destiny was to work in the steel mills or an entry-level retail job. So, I did what made the most sense (and cents) for me, enlisting in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam era. My rationale was straightforward, as the military would afford me an opportunity not only to see the world beyond the Pittsburgh borders but, more importantly, to capture the longer-term benefits of military training as a substitute for college while serving as a foundation for an uncertain career.

Little did I know then that my decision to serve my country was the first and likely the most significant decision I’ve ever made from so many perspectives. It grounded me early in life with a level of maturity, independence, and skills that still serve me well to this day.

I gained a keen appreciation for the importance of discipline, hard work, decision-making, and resilience in the face of adversity - all of which propelled my personal and professional success in a rapidly changing and ever-challenging world over the decades following my honorable discharge.

My list of lessons learned is far-reaching. I learned how to push myself to and beyond my perceived limits, that my team’s success defined my success, and that courage is standing up for what’s right and taking risks for the good of a noble cause. I learned the difference between management and authentic leadership, critical thinking and strategic thinking, and how to break complex tasks into ‘bites.’ I learned how to accept responsibility for my actions and those of my subordinates and the importance of being human and humane. The list goes on and on to the point that I recognized and took much comfort in the fact that my learned experience during my military days far overshadowed any potential book-learning that I missed by not attending college. And to be sure, every single lesson learned not only became a key cornerstone to my business success but, equally, to my personal success over the decades following my honorable discharge.

So, as you stroll through this book’s pages, please look upon it as a rare and remarkable user manual or road map for your success in business and life. Because what you are about to read is not theory but real stories by people who’ve generously shared what really matters. And that, my friends, is simply priceless.

Who Needs This Book?

I promised myself that I would not become a victim.

Frank Zaccari

This book is a collection of true stories from United States military veterans. Still, it is designed for anyone who has struggled, sacrificed, and dedicated part of their life in service to others before achieving their dream. Whether your battlefield was the military, single parenting, sole caregiving, working three jobs over several years to finish college, or coming to a new country with hope, not a promise or guarantee, just hope for a better life, this book is for you. People who put others before themselves are heroes in every sense of the word. Their stories need to be told because these stories give others hope. In the COVID world we now live in, hope is needed more than ever.

What You Will Discover:

Whether or not we want to admit we are all in the RELATIONSHIP BUSINESS. Most of our success or failure is based on the quality of our relationships. We all want the fairy tale ending, right? A successful career and a happily-ever-after personal life. Have you ever met anyone who does not want these two things? I haven’t! Why is it so difficult to achieve if this is everyone’s goal?

Life is hard, and it is certainly not fair. If we were lucky, we grew up in an environment where we had dreams of grandeur. Then life happened. Situations changed. For many of us, our dreams of grandeur turned to surviving a crisis or world-changing event. Think of what we have been through since 2001.

September 11

Nearly 20 years of war

The financial meltdown

The housing crisis

3 major recessions

Corporate downsizing

Outsourcing jobs overseas

Trade Wars

Attack on the Capital

COVID

Shelter in place

Furloughed from work or your job eliminated, or your business failed

Despite all the negatives, the authors contributing to this book survived, picked up the pieces and kept moving forward. Maybe our dreams were modified or adjusted, but they did not die. We discovered the journey would be longer and more arduous than we had hoped or anticipated. Maybe the road took us to places and situations we never dreamed we would encounter. For example, serving in a war zone; losing a job; trying to assimilate to a new career; finding our skills were obsolete; etc. Hard times come into every life. The question is, do we succumb to the hard times? Do we throw up our hands and scream why me? Do we give up? OR do we say, What can we learn from these experiences? Do we believe the hard times were obstacles that, once overcome, opened the doors to better times, better people, and a better life?

We have all heard the statement hard times builds character. That’s not true. Hard times do not build character; it reveals character. The stories in this book are about people who did not enjoy the hard times but were grateful for the strength, wisdom, and courage that came from going through the hard times.

Why Did I Write This Book?

As a Vietnam veteran whose military experience was a springboard to a long and successful business career, I want to allow veterans to share how the lessons learned during and after the military helped shape their business life.

For those of you who have read my last three bestselling books, Business Secrets for Walking on Water, Business & Personal Secrets for Avoiding Relationship Landmines, and Business & Professional Secrets for Getting Unstuck, you know my story. But please indulge me while I share my story with the new readers.

I grew up in a small, hard-luck steel town outside Buffalo, NY. Times were difficult financially. Seasonal layoffs were common, and getting ahead was limited. In my teens, I feared this was the life I was doomed to live. I was painfully shy around women and did not date much in high school. Why? I saw too many older guys from my neighborhood marry their high school sweethearts at eighteen. They were in love or wanted more sex, or felt a life working in a steel mill was good enough. They had children early, and I heard many say, Well, I made my decision, so I guess I am stuck here. I promised myself I would not get involved with anything or anyone that would keep me stuck.

Baseball was my oasis. I was pretty good and thought it might be my way out. In my senior year, I realized that my dream of playing shortstop for the Yankees would not happen. I spent two years in a community college trying to discover my new dream. At that point, I was accepted to Cornell, the highlight of my life. Two weeks later, I was number ten in the military lottery. So, my choices were to get drafted into the Army for two years with a high probability of going to Vietnam, leave the country, or enlist for four years with a guaranteed job in the Air Force. I enlisted in the Air Force and was a military medic near the end of the Vietnam war. While I was not a combat medic, I saw many things a 19-year-old shouldn’t see. I witnessed people whose lives were forever altered through no fault of their own. I promised myself that I would not become a victim.

What I learned in the Air Force was the springboard to a successful thirty-five-year professional career. At twenty-one years old, E-4, I was in charge of a pediatric clinic. We had 90 sick children a day. This job usually went to someone with a higher rank, but none were excited about dealing with 90 sick kids a day, so I took the job. Finding people who wanted to work in the clinic was a significant challenge. The hospital commander, Colonel Frank Zimmerman, told me he would set up a meeting with the Red Cross and ask for volunteers to work there. Working with volunteers is very different than working with military personnel. Volunteers don’t have to be there. They can decide not to show up and do not have to tell you why. So, at twenty-one years old, I had to learn to collaborate with people who were free to leave at any time. I had to be able to tell and show them why we do what we do in this clinic; how we will do it; what steps were needed, and how I will help and support them. I could not give orders or hold potential penalties over their head. I had to develop a cohesive team who believed that their role was essential to the success and health of these children, families, and the Air Force. We had to respect and trust each other to accomplish the mission. How did it work? In less than six months, we had a waiting list of volunteers.

These lessons served me well as I entered corporate America after finishing college. I worked in the high-tech section of a Fortune 50 company, which was trying to challenge IBM for computer supremacy at the time. I was put in charge of a program to win multi-million-dollar contracts. The major stumbling block was my company only had equipment, not a solution. To compete, I went back to my pediatric experience to identify and build relationships with application companies, database developers, network providers, and specialists in the industry to provide a solution. Often these people did not know each other, and the challenge was to show them we could win and execute the deal by working together. The term we used was Tiger Teams. To identify potential opportunities, we had people in the field who, for lack of a better term, we called bird-dogs. Their job was to identify an opportunity, get the bird in the air, so we could bring in the Tiger Team to win the deal.

The military experience served me very well when I left the Fortune level companies and moved into a career of re-launching small and midsized tech companies that had reached a plateau, were declining, or needed a course correction (pivot). For many years I was a CEO or senior leader tasked with turning around failing or floundering organizations. In my book, Business Secrets for Walking on Water, I shared the following; organizations do not fail overnight; they often decay from within over time. Bold and aggressive decisions and actions are needed to change a toxic culture.

Even though the employees know the organization will fail unless significant changes occur, the initial response is still negative. Whenever I came into an organization, the first thing I did was to meet with every employee. The meeting had two purposes. The first was to allow each person to tell me their version of the good, the bad, and the ugly within the organization and then ask them what they would do to improve the situation. The reaction was usually a confused or shocked look. No one ever asked me that before.

Well, you are being asked now. I want to know what you think will work. The second was to explain why things had to change and the process(es) we would follow to implement, monitor, and adjust to accomplish the needed changes. I wanted to be sure they felt their input was valued and knew how their role was essential to change the organization’s trajectory. I would also ask them, not tell them, to give the process a fair chance. People thrive in environments of mutual respect and appreciation. Good leaders ensure their people feel they are worth their time and interest.

For me, there are two key elements - Respect and Trust. I recently read in– Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler:

Respect is like air. As long as the air is present, no one thinks about it. But if you take it away, it’s all people think about. The instant someone perceives disrespect, the interaction is no longer about the original purpose. It is now about defending dignity, and things will spiral out of control.

Get to know employees personally and professionally. Praising them for something they do well, offering guidance, not criticism, for things they don’t do well, and helping them achieve their goals, not your personal goals, creates trust and loyalty. Trust takes time, particularly when you are changing the status quo.

Like it or not, a person’s first reaction is emotional. Why are we doing this? What does this mean for me? Will it impact my pay or hours? How will my role change? What does this mean for my family? My colleague, Kimberly Davis, in her book Brave Leadership wrote:

Brave leaders recognize that they must deal with what’s real. What’s real in today’s work environment is a bevy of emotions that, if ignored, can destroy results. While messy and inconvenient, we human beings can’t truly leave our emotions at the door, and intelligent leaders know how to recognize, honor, and defuse heightened emotions in the workplace. They lead through the lens of humanity.

After the initial face-to-face meetings, most people take a wait-and-see attitude. Many will say they are on board with the program but stand on the sidelines waiting for you to fail. They want to see how committed you are to the process. They will watch what you say and do and how you react to real-world situations. Are you really keeping people in the loop? Are you really open to suggestions? The more you stay on course with your process, the more you explain why you are doing what you are doing, the more you share and celebrate the small victories, and the more people will start to move from wait and see to maybe this new program has a chance to succeed.

Fortunately, none of the companies I helped to re-launch failed under my watch. Why? Luck had something to do with it, but building trust and respect learned in the Air Force was far more important than luck. Let me explain. In the military and we always spoke about the mission. What matters is the mission. But that is not true. What matters is the relationship and the trust we build with the people involved in the mission. And that comes from listening, relating, and understanding others. In the pediatric clinic, once we established a common ground that everyone believed in and were committed to, our clinic operated at a higher level of efficiency and effectiveness. The same occurred in my business life. I’ve found that people will always exceed your expectations when they feel seen, listened to, and valued. I am not saying I consistently implemented their ideas or suggestions;