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May 28, 1999
Web posted at: 9:32 a.m. EDT (1332 GMT)

by Kathleen Melymuka

(IDG) -- A subcontractor on Pat Shediack's imaging project changed an entry in a database index and crashed the server. "Their database administrator was standing there and had no idea what to do," Shediack recalls. "We were dead in the water."

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Shediack didn't know the technology, but he knew he had to do something. So he pulled the plug on the server — literally. Then he plugged it back in. "The damn thing came up and reindexed itself," he laughs.

The difference between Shediack's response and the database administrator's? "To him, not doing anything was an option," Shediack says. "To me, that's not an option."

Shediack developed his can-do attitude during more than 20 years in the U.S. Air Force. He's now a project manager at PeopleServe Inc., a Dublin, Ohio, provider of services to people with mental retardation.

"In the military, you are not allowed to fail," Shediack says.

The U.S. military has developed a secret weapon in the war against the information technology worker shortage: veterans.

More than 200,000 veterans leave the service every year, according to Transition Assistance Online and nearly all bring with them a familiarity with computers. In fact, more than 40% of them have worked directly in IT as computer operators, programmers, systems analysts, LAN specialists and IT managers.

Veterans also bring a mind-set that makes for great IT leadership. "John [Lochow] is an awesome CIO," says Tony Ibarguen, CEO of Tech Data Corp. in Clearwater, Fla. "He has a very structured methodology and people work well as a team under that structure. There's no confusion and very little politics."

Lochow's early management experience came during two tours of duty with the Air Force as an engineer on a C130 transport plane, including 39 combat missions in Vietnam and Cambodia. What he learned was how to work with people. "I've had so much interaction with so much diversity that I can understand people and adapt my approach to each person," he says. "You just don't get that training anywhere else."

IT is a natural destination for veterans — and veterans are a natural labor pool for IT recruiters — because IT's dynamics are like the military, says Jimmie Price, an Army veteran and supervisor of PC support at Browning-Ferris Industries, a trash-management company in Houston. "In the military, you have to be adaptable," he says. "The truck may get in an accident, the best person may take a bullet, but the mission has to get done."

The same goes for IT, says Ken Kantor, an Army Vietnam veteran and director of computer center services?at Browning-Ferris. "In the MIS world, you have to get the system working, whatever it takes," he says.

Both the military and IT are failure-prone environments where individuals matter, says Computerworld columnist Paul A. Strassmann, a World War II commando and former CIO at Xerox Corp. and Kraft Foods Inc. "The sentry falls asleep, and everybody dies," he says. "The person who doesn't label the storage medium wipes out a backup file. You can't fake it."

Why they succeed

For most veterans in IT, failure isn't an option. "They're like pit bulls," says Andy Bochman, an Air Force veteran who is now director of business development at Aberdeen Group Inc., a Boston IT consulting firm. "They will follow through to the end."

Veterans know that good decisions require all the available information, and they won't gloss over bad news. Shediack recalls that when he once hesitated to tell his company commander some bad news, his superior officer screamed at him: "Are you only going to tell him the good news, or are you going to tell him all the news?"

"To this day, I hear that scream in my ear all the time," he says, "and I tell my manager all the news."

The military stresses project management. "They teach you to look past today . . . toward where you want to be at the end of a project," says Phil McDowell, a 26-year Air Force veteran, now senior project manager at PeopleServe. "And you learn to be assertive and take charge when you need to."

Supervisors notice such leadership. "If I give Phil a project to manage, I don't have to worry about it," says PeopleServe CIO Randall Bradford, also an Air Force veteran.

The military understands deadlines, says Amy Courter, a patrol commander in the Michigan Wing of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and vice president of MIS at Valassis Communications Inc., a marketing services firm in Lavonia, Mich. "In CAP, if a [rescue] ground team shows up late, they may find a person expired. That bleeds over into my life here: In the last three years, we completed all but one project on time."

Teamwork is second nature to veterans. "The success of the unit was much more important than the success of the individual. But in the military, that just means all of you will survive, so that creates a certain amount of urgency to do it right," says Andrew Meldrum, a Navy veteran who recently left his position as CIO at United Press International to become chief operating officer at start-up Infrastructure Defense Inc. in Arlington, Va.

When it comes to systems, veterans have a head start in dealing with sophisticated, integrated platforms — like military aircraft, for example. Installing a new computer system into an aircraft is an exercise in planning and integration, Meldrum says. Not only does it have to work; it has to fly. "You think about impacts on other systems, logistics, support, testing, training and the next upgrade before you ever put it in, or you pay the price," he says.

That facility for planning is invaluable in business, says James Adams, CEO of Infrastructure Defense. "I can go to Andy and say, 'I have this great idea,' and he'll come back the next day and have figured out how to do it."

Leadership

The military is all about leadership, and responsibility comes early and often. In his early 20s, Bradford, led a missile wing with 200 intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying 650 warheads.

And there's more to military leadership than just giving orders. "When you go jumping up out of a trench and running toward a machine gun yelling, 'Follow me!' if they don't like you, they're not going to follow you, and they may shoot you in the back." Lochow says. "You have to develop leadership skills to get people to do things they don't want to do."

You also learn to promote good people quickly. "In the military, they want people to move along quickly because they don't have them for that much time," Lochow says. "I always move people's careers along."

People who work with veterans say they're just what IT needs. "They have a history of discipline and structure and training and process and a mind-set of creativity and initiative, and that's a wonderful combination you rarely find in the business world," Adams says.

"We have had very good success hiring veterans in our MIS department," says Todd Hatley, human resources manager at PeopleServe. "They bring with them more discipline and a sense of the 'bigger picture' due to their military experience. They are very team-oriented and take direction extremely well, and that has rubbed off on our nonmilitary employees in the department. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to hire other IT professionals from the armed services."

Even so, veterans say many companies seem to harbor a bias against them, based largely on outdated stereotypes. "They may think that all military officers are George Patton, but what about Colin Powell?" says Alan Rogers, a retired two-star Air Force general who is now vice president and programming manager at American Management Systems Inc. in Fairfax. Va. "We're really a whole range of different kinds of people."

Of course, that includes some who may not succeed in business. In fact, sometimes veterans' strengths can hurt them. For example, faced with a bad strategy, their focus on the mission isn't really a benefit because they may be less likely to raise objections when they should, Bochman says.

And even veterans' strongest advocates say corporate culture, with its entrepreneurial, short-term, transaction-oriented, revenue-driven focus presents adjustment challenges. "It's a hard transition," Rogers says. "You have to really want to be a part of a new culture."

But many veterans do. "Everyone complains about not having any IT people to hire," Shediack says. "I know of [veterans] who would love to get into our business. They just need that entry-level job."

Melymuka is Computerworld's senior editor, management. You can contact her at kathleen_ melymuka@computerworld. com.