Challenging, urgent missions with life-or-death stakes — those are the kind that Green Beret warriors accept. Afforded so little margin for error, these crack teams of soldiers adhere to the most tried-and-true tactics for effective leadership and collaboration.
Eric Brown served as a Green Beret for over 20 years over 12 deployments overseas. Upon entering civilian life, he launched Imperio Consulting to make elite military strategy available to all kinds of businesses and organizations.
“We use insights from hard-earned experience to transform corporate teams so they can operate at maximum efficiency,” Brown explains. “We call our method the ‘Green Beret Approach.’”
The Green Beret Approach
“The Green Beret Approach focuses on three principles: simplicity, adaptability, and collaboration,” Brown says. “Each of these principles guides workplaces toward improved resilience and performance.”
The first principle — simplicity — refers to workplaces where leadership communicates the organization’s goals clearly, and everyone understands the mission. According to a study by international branding company Siegel+Gale, workplaces that demonstrate this simplicity enjoy more engaged staff members and superior business outcomes. Innovation shoots up by over 50 percent, trust skyrockets to 95 percent, employees become much more willing to recommend their employer to others, and the retention rate improves markedly.
Paradoxically, however, attaining this simplicity is far from simple.
“That’s one of the biggest misconceptions we often encounter,” Brown says. “People think simple means easy, but it’s actually the opposite. It’s hard to make things as simple as possible. It’s like that famous quote: ‘If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.’”
To help businesses attain simplicity, Imperio Consulting follows a three-step procedure: assessment, discovery, and solution. In the assessment stage, they gather intelligence about the organization and then analyze that information to define their business needs before conducting a thorough examination of the client’s current situation, goals, and operations. In the discovery stage, they explore and define multiple possible options to address any pain points. Finally, they engage leadership to determine the single, most advantageous path for moving forward and produce a refined customer-specific solution that delivers measurable value for the client’s business
“The work we do is entirely customized to the particular client,” Brown explains. “As a result of this process, we help the organization distill their operations down to their most simple, elegant, and efficient form.”
The next principle Imperio Consulting emphasizes is adaptability.
The Imperio Consulting way: Ensuring adaptability
“You’ve probably heard that saying about plans not surviving first contact with the enemy,” Brown says. “In my experience, surprises frequently occur during special-forces missions, requiring the soldiers on the ground to respond quickly and skillfully. That’s why it’s best to expect something to go sideways. The same is true in the business world.”
Indeed, businesses are continually buffeted with conflicting forces and most remain agile to cope with sudden shifts in market conditions. For this reason, Imperio Consulting prioritizes adaptability.
“To succeed today, your business can’t be wedded to outdated processes and mindsets,” Brown says. “We teach teams how to become flexible, reframing challenges as opportunities. This helps people persevere and even thrive under pressure.”
As part of that work, Brown and his team help businesses empower their employees, trusting them to take initiative and do what’s necessary to succeed based on real-world conditions. “Sometimes, leadership doesn’t even see the barriers their team members face,” Brown points out. “It helps to have an outside set of eyes and ears to ferret out these problems and explain how to eliminate them.”
Collaboration leads to success
Imperio Consulting’s third principle focuses on cultivating a safe, healthy, inclusive workplace where collaboration can thrive.
“It’s common for people to be so focused on their own work and getting through the day that they forget to engage with each other,” Brown says. “Do you know your team members’ strengths and weaknesses? Do you know what their communication styles are? How about their personality type? Do people at every level of your organization feel like they can be candid about what they know to be right? If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to these questions, then your business needs to work on its collaborative problem-solving skills.”
Many studies have found that effective collaboration unlocks business success. For instance, Stanford research discovered that employees in a collaborative workplace complete tasks 50 percent more effectively. Studies have also associated collaboration with increased product development, improved product quality, increased employee engagement, and decreased turnover.
Accordingly, Imperio Consulting takes a people-centric approach that brings teams together and promotes collaboration. “We conduct personality inventories and communication styles inventories to help people understand each other better,” Brown says. “We also help build cohesiveness through team-building exercises and workshops. These can last as little as a few hours to as long as multiple days at a time. One of the most popular things we do is to set up scavenger hunts for employees to complete together in small groups.”
Start your mission with Imperio Consulting
Consider the Green Beret Approach to make your business or organization as resilient, efficient, and productive as possible. Imperio Consulting’s time-honored principles of simplicity, adaptability, and collaboration maximize the chances of success when it matters most. Contact Imperio Consulting to start your mission today!
