In Semper-Fi, Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way, Dan Carrison points out an effective strategy that the armed forces use in order to keep servicemembers continually focused on progression!
On their uniforms, there are markings for both time in the service as well as their pay grade (Carrison and Walsh 86). A soldier that has a lot of service time but an oddly low pay grade will look strange! People on the outside will begin to question, “why hasn’t he progressed higher?” “Is he not ambitious at all?” Or “did he get demoted?”
This motivates soldiers not to stagnate their development and progress. How many times have we said to ourselves, “I’ll relax and just test later.”? We might have said this ourselves or we have heard others say the same thing.
Certain martial arts systems will do similar to get students to prioritize their development. Some schools award stripes for attendance which are removed when the student reaches a new rank. If a student has a full belt of tapes, they WILL feel pressured to test and progress.
At the black belt ranks, there are black belt numbers that are sometimes awarded to the students. If the students don’t test for a while or take a break, their Dan numbers will be much lower than their colleagues when they return. This will create some discomfort.
When we are in the corporate world we need to inspect ourselves as well. Does our service time and position line up? If not, we have the opportunity to make a change and go for that progression or leave the company for a better opportunity.
While yes, we are on our own journey, are we really on a journey if there is no destination? Make sure you are never stagnating toward your goals!
Bibliography:
Carrison, Dan, and Rod Walsh. Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way. AMACOM, 2005.
