What 25 Years of Military Intelligence Taught Me About Business Decisions

The senior officer looked at me expectantly. "What is the adversary going to do next?"

It was the question every intelligence officer dreads and faces constantly. Leadership needs an answer. The mission depends on accurate assessment. Lives hang in the balance. And the honest truth is that I did not have definitive information about the adversary's next move.

What I did have was a framework for predictive analysis. I had knowledge of the adversary's capabilities, historical patterns, and strategic objectives. I had environmental factors that would constrain or enable different courses of action. I had indicators we were monitoring that suggested likely directions. But I did not have certainty.

So I did what intelligence officers are trained to do: I provided my assessment of the most likely course of action, supported by the analysis behind that conclusion. I presented the indicators we would monitor to confirm or refute the assessment. I outlined alternative possibilities and their probability. And I gave leadership what they actually needed, not perfect information, but sufficient intelligence to make an informed decision.

A strategic planning board used for decision-making in military operations.

That scenario played out dozens of times throughout my career. Leadership asking what would happen next. Me providing the best possible assessment based on systematic analysis of incomplete information. The decision-makers acting on that intelligence, knowing it was not certain but was the best foundation available.

Years later, sitting in corporate conference rooms, I watched senior executives struggle with remarkably similar challenges. They needed to predict competitor moves, market shifts, and customer responses. They wanted certainty but faced complexity. They postponed decisions while seeking more data, not recognizing that perfect information would never arrive.

That is when I realized something important. The frameworks that guided my intelligence assessments were not just useful in military operations. They were exactly what business leaders needed.

The Gap Between Military and Business Decision-Making

Military decision-making frameworks evolved over decades to address specific challenges: incomplete information, time pressure, multiple stakeholders, and high stakes. These are not occasional business challenges but rather they are the daily reality of modern leadership.

Yet most business leaders operate without systematic frameworks. They rely on instinct, experience, and whatever decision-making approach they have absorbed through years of trial and error. This works until it does not. When complexity increases, when stakes rise, when time compresses, ad hoc decision-making fails.

I experienced this gap firsthand when I transitioned from military service to civilian work. In the military, I had clear frameworks: the Military Decision-Making Process for complex planning, the OODA Loop for rapid action cycles, Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment for understanding complex situations. These were not just theories. These were tested, refined approaches that worked under the most demanding conditions imaginable.

In the business world, I found leaders making decisions worth millions of dollars without comparable systematic approaches. They had business acumen and industry expertise, but they lacked the frameworks that could transform that expertise into consistently effective decisions.

Why Military Frameworks Work in Business

Military decision-making frameworks share several characteristics that make them remarkably effective in business contexts:

They assume incomplete information. Military planners never wait for perfect intelligence because perfect intelligence does not exist. The frameworks are designed to help leaders make sound decisions with whatever information is available. This mirrors business reality far better than frameworks that assume comprehensive data.

They prioritize speed appropriately. Military frameworks recognize that timing matters. A good decision executed now often beats a perfect decision delivered too late. Business leaders face the same truth: markets move, competitors act, opportunities close. Speed has strategic value.

They account for opposition. Military frameworks assume an intelligent adversary who will respond to your actions. Business leaders face competitors, market forces, and regulatory environments that react to their decisions. Frameworks that account for this dynamic response create more robust strategies.

They focus on predictive analysis. Just as I had to assess what the adversary would likely do next, business leaders must predict market movements, competitive responses, and customer behaviors. Military intelligence frameworks provide systematic approaches to making these predictions based on capabilities, patterns, and environmental factors rather than guesswork.

They separate planning from execution. Military frameworks distinguish between making decisions and implementing them. This separation allows for rapid adjustment when conditions change, which they inevitably do in both military operations and business environments.

They emphasize learning. Military frameworks build in assessment and adjustment. After Action Reviews ensure that lessons from each operation inform future decisions. This systematic learning creates continuous improvement rather than repeated mistakes.

The Frameworks That Changed How I Lead

My approach to leadership, what I call Purposeful Leadership, is built on these military decision-making frameworks. When I work to remove obstacles for my team, I am applying intelligence preparation principles to understand their operational environment. When I conduct systematic check-ins, I am running an OODA Loop to observe, orient, decide, and act on emerging challenges. When I help teams plan complex initiatives, I draw on the Military Decision-Making Process to ensure we consider multiple courses of action.

These are not abstract concepts. They are practical tools that create measurable results:

The OODA Loop helps leaders cycle through observation, orientation, decision, and action faster than their competition. Originally developed for aerial combat, it applies perfectly to business environments where rapid response creates competitive advantage.

The Military Decision-Making Process provides systematic approaches to complex planning challenges. It ensures leaders consider multiple options, war-game potential outcomes, and choose courses of action based on analysis rather than assumption.

Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment teaches leaders how to understand the systems they operate within. This framework reveals how different factors interact, where leverage points exist, and what changes will create desired effects. It is the same framework I used to predict adversary actions—now applied to predicting market dynamics and competitive responses.

Effects-Based Operations focuses on outcomes rather than activities. Instead of planning actions, leaders plan effects—the specific changes they want to create. This shifts thinking from "what should we do" to "what do we want to achieve."

After Action Reviews create organizational learning by systematically examining what was supposed to happen, what actually happened, why differences occurred, and what can be learned. This transforms every experience into an opportunity for improvement.

The Decision-Making Challenge Business Leaders Face

Here is what I observe in many organizations: leaders making critical decisions without systematic frameworks to guide them. They face information overload but lack tools to filter signal from noise. They feel pressure to decide quickly but have no methodology for determining when they have sufficient information. They struggle with complexity but approach each challenge as unique rather than applying proven frameworks.

This is not a failure of intelligence or capability. It is a gap in methodology. Most business leaders have never been exposed to the systematic decision-making frameworks that military professionals use daily. They have attended leadership seminars and read business books, but they have not learned the operational frameworks that make decision-making systematic rather than reactive.

The cost of this gap is substantial. Decisions delayed while gathering unnecessary information. Opportunities missed because leaders could not act with appropriate speed. Strategies that fail because they did not account for competitive response. Organizations that repeat mistakes because they lack systematic learning processes.

When executives ask me "What will our competitor do next?" or "How will the market respond to this change?" they are asking the same fundamental question that senior officer asked me: What happens next? The difference is that business leaders often lack the frameworks to provide systematic assessments. They guess. They extrapolate from limited experience. They wait for more data that may never clarify the picture.

What Makes Military Frameworks Different

When I explain military decision-making frameworks to business leaders, they often ask what makes these approaches different from standard business frameworks. The distinction is important.

Business frameworks often assume stable conditions, comprehensive information, and rational actors. Military frameworks assume chaos, incomplete intelligence, and adversarial opposition. Business frameworks tend to be prescriptive: follow these steps to success. Military frameworks are adaptive: here is how to think systematically regardless of specific circumstances.

Perhaps most importantly, military frameworks are battle-tested. They have been refined through actual use in life-and-death situations. When a framework fails in military operations, the consequences are immediate and severe. This creates powerful evolutionary pressure toward frameworks that actually work under pressure.

This does not mean military frameworks are perfect or universally applicable. It means they offer proven approaches to the specific challenges that business leaders increasingly face: uncertainty, time pressure, incomplete information, and complex systems where actions create cascading effects.

The Path Forward

Understanding that military frameworks apply to business is one thing. Learning to use them effectively is another. These frameworks require practice and adaptation. They need to be understood deeply, not just applied superficially. And they work best when integrated into organizational culture rather than used sporadically.

Over my 25 years of military service, first enlisted and then as a commissioned officer, I learned these frameworks in the most demanding environments imaginable. I applied them in crisis response, intelligence operations, joint service coordination, and strategic planning. I taught them to hundreds of service members. And I refined my understanding through thousands of hours of practical application.

I learned to provide predictive analysis when certainty was impossible. I learned to identify the indicators that mattered versus the noise that distracted. I learned to present assessments that gave decision-makers what they needed even when I could not give them what they wanted. These skills, developed under pressure with serious consequences, translate directly to business challenges.

When I transitioned to civilian leadership, I had to adapt these frameworks for business contexts. The adaptation was not always straightforward. Business environments operate differently than military ones. Influence matters more than authority. Consensus building replaces command structure. But the fundamental frameworks remained remarkably effective once adapted appropriately.

That adaptation process of understanding what transfers directly, what requires modification, and what business leaders need most is what I now share with others. Not military frameworks applied crudely to business, but systematic decision-making approaches refined specifically for business leaders who face uncertainty, complexity, and pressure.

Begin With Assessment

If you recognize the challenges I have described in information overload, decision paralysis, reactive rather than systematic approaches then military decision-making frameworks may provide exactly what you need. The question is not whether these frameworks work. Decades of military application have proven their effectiveness. The question is how to adapt them for your specific business context.

Start by assessing your current decision-making approach. When you face complex decisions, do you have systematic frameworks to guide your thinking? When someone asks you what will happen next, do you have methods for predictive analysis beyond intuition? When you need to act quickly, do you have processes for determining information sufficiency? When you make strategic choices, do you systematically consider multiple courses of action and their likely effects?

If the honest answer to these questions reveals gaps, then you are ready to learn the frameworks that transformed my leadership and can transform yours. In the articles that follow, I will share the specific frameworks, their applications, and how to implement them in business contexts.

These are not theories or academic concepts. They are proven methodologies that work under pressure because they were designed specifically for pressure. And they are waiting for business leaders ready to move beyond reactive decision-making toward systematic, purposeful leadership.

The frameworks that helped me provide intelligence assessments when lives depended on accuracy can help you make better business decisions every day. Let me show you how.