When we discharge and start working with civilians, we need to accept mistakes as a regular part of work. That means not losing your sh*t, or feeling like you're going to get screamed at when something isn't done properly. Personally, this was hard for me. I recall being confused with the frequent mistakes and casual acceptance of work being so disorganized. If I'm being honest, I felt like everyone needed to get yelled at, or at the very minimum spoken to with some knife-hands being waved at peoples' faces. But after a while, I realized my standards might have been a bit too high for a digital marketing workplace. As one of my workmates put-it, "Dan, relax... we're putting some jeans on the internet."

When you work in an office, nobody is going to get shot, drown, burned or break million-dollar assets… so they don't care about you being up-tight for wanting to get shit "done right" all the time. This is a true story, it's not a joke, civilians don't think about putting in a SOP for shit that is going wrong all the time, they will typically have meetings & discuss it, talk about subjective feelings & share why they think it's not going well, but none of them will suggest putting in some routine procedures or 'training & assessment' docs…that would be absurd to suggest for them. Why?

It's simple…there is zero risk in an office environment, nobody is dying. The only thing that is at risk is the impact on getting or saving money for the company. Typically, unless there's a direct bonus tied to the project that civilians are working on, they won't care about a lost contract either. There's 1 thing that all civilians value over doing a good job and working as a team…being friendly and having a good relationship with your co-workers.

Be conscious of how civilians operate, their idea of teamwork means individuals coming together and talking about how they're going to work together on something without any SOP or solid understanding of how they can optimally work together…it's called improvisation, and this approach works best when you form relationships with people. They will say things like, "we like to remain agile", which in most cases means "we won't have a plan and will work it out on the fly".

If you’re thinking about hanging-up your uniform, checkout my online course: ‘Discharge with Confidence’, it’s for anybody that is active duty or recently discharged veterans. Drop your email below and get a copy of the course brochure.