A Military Framework for Organizational Sustainability

Building Leaders, Not Followers

The ultimate test of leadership isn’t what happens when you’re there – it’s what happens when you’re not.

The call came at 0300 hours. I was on emergency leave, dealing with a family crisis 1,000 miles away from my platoon. On the other end of the line was my battalion commander: “Matthews, we just received orders for an immediate readiness exercise. Your platoon needs to be fully deployed to the field within six hours. Can they handle it without you?”

At that moment, hanging on his question was the ultimate verdict on my leadership. Had I built an organization that needed me, or one that could thrive without me? Had I created followers who waited for direction, or leaders who could seize the initiative?

“Sir,” I replied, feeling a confidence that would have been impossible months earlier, “they’ve got this.”

Six hours later, my platoon executed one of the most efficient deployment exercises in battalion history. They didn’t just meet the standard – they exceeded it, implementing innovations I hadn’t even considered. When I returned a week later, my platoon sergeant briefed me on their success with a smile: “Sir, no offense, but we moved faster without you second-guessing everything.”

That was the moment I knew I had finally learned the most crucial lesson in leadership: your job isn’t to create followers who need you – it’s to build leaders who don’t.

The Sustainability Test: Exposing the Hidden Fragility in Organizations

Here’s a test that most organizations fail, though few realize they’re even taking it: Remove any key leader suddenly and see what happens. Does the organization continue to thrive, or does it stumble? Does innovation continue, or does everyone wait for the leader’s return? Do decisions get made, or does paralysis set in?

This isn’t a theoretical exercise. In the military, leaders can be reassigned, deployed, or become casualties with no warning. An organization that can’t function without a single person is a liability, not an asset. Yet in the civilian world, we often celebrate the “irreplaceable” employee as if dependency is a virtue.

Consider these scenarios:

• The CEO who boasts, “This place would fall apart without me.”
• The manager whose team can’t make decisions during their vacation
• The founder who still approves every minor decision years after the startup
• The director whose department’s productivity drops 50% when they’re at a conference

These aren’t signs of strong leadership – they’re symptoms of organizational fragility. They represent single points of failure that can weaken an organization at the worst possible moment.

During my early months as a platoon leader, I would have failed this test spectacularly. As I’ve shared in previous articles, my misinterpretation of servant leadership led me to create a platoon that excelled when I was present but would have collapsed in my absence. Every decision flowed through me. Every plan originated from my desk. Every solution came from my mind.

The external metrics looked good – we received praise from senior leadership, our training exercises ran smoothly, and we met every standard. But beneath this veneer of success was a fatal flaw: I had built a follower factory, not a leadership laboratory.

The Follower Factory: How Traditional Leadership Creates Dependency

The follower factory doesn’t announce itself with signs or warnings. It develops gradually, often with the best intentions, through patterns that seem logical or even virtuous at the time:

The Micromanagement Trap

It starts innocently enough. You want to ensure quality, so you review every decision. To prevent mistakes, you create detailed procedures for every scenario. You want to be helpful, so you provide answers before questions are fully formed.

In my platoon, this looked like:

• Creating training schedules down to five-minute increments
• Prescribing exact methods for every task
• Jumping in to solve problems before my soldiers could attempt solutions
• Reviewing and revising every plan before implementation

Each action seemed reasonable in isolation. Together, they created a culture where thinking was discouraged and initiative was unnecessary. Why develop solutions when the lieutenant would provide them? Why take risks when following the prescribed path was safer?

The Competence Performance

Many leaders create followers not out of insecurity, but rather from a desire to demonstrate competence. We want to prove we deserve our position, so we showcase our knowledge at every opportunity. We solve problems quickly to show our capability. We make decisions decisively to project confidence.

However, each demonstration of individual competence can diminish the team’s capability. When leaders always have the answer, teams stop looking for it. When leaders solve every problem, teams stop developing problem-solving skills. The very actions meant to inspire confidence instead inspire a sense of dependency.

The False Efficiency

One of the most seductive aspects of the follower factory is its initial efficiency. When one person makes all decisions, there’s no debate. When procedures prescribe every action, there’s no uncertainty. When followers simply execute leader-generated plans, coordination seems simpler.

This efficiency is an illusion. What appears smooth on the surface masks a brittle system that breaks under pressure. The moment the leader is unavailable, the efficiency evaporates, replaced by confusion and paralysis.

The Military Imperative: Why “Next Person Up” Isn’t Optional

The military context provides unique clarity on why building leaders at every level isn’t just nice to have – it’s essential for survival. In combat, leaders at any level can become casualties. The radio operator might need to call in fire support. The junior soldier might need to lead the squad. The platoon sergeant might need to coordinate with the battalion.

This reality drives several core military principles:

Distributed Leadership

Every soldier learns one level up and two levels down. A squad leader understands platoon operations. A private knows squad tactics. This creates redundancy that ensures continuity regardless of casualties. In business terms, it’s succession planning on steroids – not just for executives but for every role.

Commander’s Intent

Military operations employ a concept known as “commander’s intent” – the desired end state and key tasks that must be accomplished. Leaders at every level understand not just what to do but why, enabling them to adapt when situations change. This transforms followers into thinking actors who can pursue objectives even when specific plans become obsolete.

After Action Reviews

The military’s practice of conducting immediate debriefs, where everyone, regardless of rank, can share lessons learned, fosters continuous leadership development. A private who notices a tactical flaw can educate a colonel. This democratization of learning builds leaders faster than any formal program.

Mission Command

Perhaps most importantly, the military has evolved from detailed command and control to “mission command,” which provides clear objectives while allowing subordinate leaders to determine the most effective way to achieve them. This philosophy acknowledges that leaders on the ground often possess better situational awareness than distant commanders.

These principles aren’t military nice-to-haves – they’re survival mechanisms developed through centuries of hard experience. Yet they translate directly to any organization that wants to build resilience and sustainable success.

The Framework: Four Phases of Leader Development

Based on my experience transforming a follower factory into a leadership laboratory, here’s a practical framework for building leaders at every level:

Phase 1: Identifying Leadership Potential at All Levels (Months 1-2)

Leadership potential exists throughout organizations, but it’s often hidden by cultures that discourage initiative. The first step is creating conditions where potential can emerge:

Actions:

• Rotate meeting leadership among team members
• Ask junior members to brief senior leadership on their areas
• Create small project teams led by emerging leaders
• Institute “shadow” programs where juniors attend senior meetings

Key Insight: Leadership potential often appears first as dissatisfaction with the status quo. The complainer might be your next innovator if given the chance to lead change.

In my platoon, I discovered that a soldier I had dismissed as difficult was frustrated by inefficiencies he could see but wasn’t empowered to fix. When given leadership of a process improvement team, he became one of our strongest junior leaders.

Phase 2: Creating Developmental Opportunities (Months 2-4)

Development requires more than training programs – it requires real leadership experiences with real consequences. Safe failure must be possible but not costless.

Actions:

• Delegate meaningful decisions, not just tasks
• Create stretch assignments that push comfort zones
• Allow leaders to own projects from conception to completion
• Provide resources, but resist the urge to direct

Key Insight: The development sweet spot is where success is possible but not guaranteed. Too easy, and there’s no growth. Too hard and confidence crumbles.

We implemented “Leader Lab Fridays,” where junior soldiers planned and led training sessions. The first attempts were rough, but within months, they were developing innovative approaches that became battalion standards.

Phase 3: Allowing Controlled Failure (Months 3-6)

This is the most challenging phase for leaders who have built their reputation on consistent execution. Allowing failure feels like a dereliction of duty. But failure, properly managed, is the fastest teacher.

Actions:

• Define acceptable failure boundaries in advance
• Debrief failures for lessons, not blame
• Share your own failure stories to normalize learning
• Celebrate brave attempts that don’t succeed

Key Insight: The goal isn’t to avoid all failures but to fail fast, cheap, and forward. Each failure should make the organization smarter.

When one of my squad leaders’ training plans failed spectacularly, we conducted a public debrief. His honest assessment of what went wrong and what he learned did more to develop other leaders than any success could have.

Phase 4: Celebrating Distributed Success (Months 6-12)

The final phase is shifting recognition from individual achievement to collective leadership growth. Success becomes measured not by personal accomplishments but by team development.

Actions:

• Highlight decisions made without your involvement
• Recognize leaders who develop other leaders
• Track leadership distribution metrics
• Share stories of team success during the leader’s absence

Key Insight: What gets celebrated gets repeated. Celebrate dependency and you’ll create more. Celebrate distributed leadership and watch it multiply.

Case Study: From Dependency to Distributed Leadership

Let me share the full journey of our platoon transformation:

Before: The Follower Factory

• Decision bottleneck: 95% of decisions required my approval
• Innovation rate: Near-zero soldier-initiated improvements
• Meeting dynamics: I talked 80% of the time
• Absence impact: 50% productivity drop when I was away
• Leadership bench: 2-3 soldiers showed leadership behaviors
• Morale indicators: Compliance-based, low engagement

During: The Messy Middle

The transition was neither smooth nor comfortable:

Month 1: Confusion as soldiers waited for detailed directions that didn’t come. Some accused me of abandoning my responsibilities.

Month 2: First breakthrough as a junior sergeant, solved a logistics problem I’d been struggling with. His success inspired others to step forward.

Month 3: Power struggles emerged as informal leaders challenged the formal hierarchy. We had to navigate new dynamics while maintaining military structure.

Month 4: Momentum shift as success stories accumulated. Soldiers began seeking leadership opportunities rather than avoiding them.

Month 5: Cultural tipping point where distributed leadership became the norm. Peer pressure shifted from “wait for the LT” to “figure it out.”

Month 6: Full transformation evident when I returned from leave to find three major innovations implemented without my input.

After: Sustainable, Scalable Success

• Decision distribution: 20% of my decisions, 80% distributed
• Innovation rate: 3-4 soldier-initiated improvements monthly
• Meeting dynamics: Rotating leadership, broad participation
• Absence impact: Zero productivity loss, potential improvement
• Leadership bench: 40+ soldiers demonstrating leadership
• Morale indicators: Ownership-based, high engagement

The metrics tell only part of the story. The real transformation was in identity. Soldiers stopped seeing themselves as followers and began to see themselves as leaders. They stopped asking “What should I do?” and started asking “What needs to be done?”

Corporate Application Guide: From Military to Marketplace

While military examples provide clear illustrations, the principles apply directly to corporate environments:

Adapting Military Principles to Business

Commander’s Intent → Strategic Clarity

• Ensure every employee understands not just their tasks but the company’s mission
• Communicate the “why” behind decisions, not just the “what”
• Create clear success criteria that allow for multiple paths

After Action Reviews → Continuous Learning Culture

• Institute regular retrospectives beyond project post-mortems
• Create psychological safety for honest feedback
• Democratize learning by valuing insights from all levels

Mission Command → Empowered Execution

• Define outcomes, not processes
• Push decision authority to the lowest practical level
• Trust teams to find better ways than you imagined

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Pitfall 1: Partial Commitment

• Saying you want distributed leadership while maintaining approval authority
• Solution: Define clear decision boundaries and stick to them

Pitfall 2: Punishment for Failure

• Celebrating risk-taking until something goes wrong
• Solution: Distinguish between competence failures and brave attempts

Pitfall 3: Patience Shortage

• Expecting immediate results from leadership development
• Solution: Measure progress in quarters, not weeks

Pitfall 4: Culture Clash

• Implementing distributed leadership in a command culture
• Solution: Start with pilot teams and expand based on success

Measuring Leadership Development ROI

Traditional metrics miss the value of distributed leadership. Consider tracking:

• Decision speed: How fast do decisions get made without escalation?
• Innovation frequency: How many improvements come from non-leaders?
• Succession readiness: How many people could step up tomorrow?
• Engagement scores: Do people feel empowered to lead?
• Resilience testing: How does performance change during the leader’s absence?

Your Leadership Legacy: Followers or Leaders?

As I reflect on my military service, the accomplishment I’m most proud of isn’t any personal achievement or recognition. It’s the number of soldiers from my platoon who went on to become successful leaders themselves. Several are now officers. Others are senior NCOs. Some left the military and went on to lead in civilian organizations. They don’t lead like me – they lead better than me, having learned from my mistakes and added their innovations.

This is the ultimate measure of leadership success: not what you accomplish, but what continues to be accomplished after you’re gone. Not the followers who need you, but the leaders who surpass you.

Every leader faces a choice, whether they recognize it or not. You can build an organization that showcases your indispensability, or you can build one that demonstrates your replaceability. You can create followers who execute your vision or leaders who make their own. You can be the hero of every story, or the author of many heroes’ stories.

The military taught me this lesson through necessity – in combat, single points of failure get people killed. However, every organization faces its battles, its moments when key leaders are unavailable, and its tests of resilience. Will yours pass the sustainability test?

The framework is proven. The principles are clear. The only question is whether you dare to make yourself unnecessary, which, paradoxically, is what makes you truly valuable.

Build leaders, not followers. Your organization’s future depends on it.

Lavar Matthews specializes in transforming organizations from follower factories into leadership laboratories. His military-tested framework helps companies build sustainable success through distributed leadership development. Whether through keynote speeches, leadership workshops, or organizational consulting, Lavar helps leaders create their most important legacy: more leaders.