Read time: 4.1 min.

{{First Name | My friend}},

I grew up as an Army brat.

My dad served for 37.5 years and retired as a three-star general. This means I grew up moving regularly. Every two to three years, a new post, a new school, a new house. By the time I left for West Point, I had done it more times than I could count.

And every single time, moving day was an event.

My parents took the logistics seriously. There were conversations about the plan. What needed to happen. What successful execution looked like. Who was responsible for what.

My dad invested real thought into the approach each time. If the last move hadn't gone smoothly, he would revisit what happened and adjust. The strategy, by any reasonable measure, was sound.

The movers would come, pack everything up, and finish the day before our departure. We would overnight in the empty house, with everything we needed for the drive already set aside. By morning, all that remained was getting five people and their items into the car and on the road by the appointed time.

Simple enough.

If you grew up in a military family, you already know. And if you didn't, I'll paint the picture.

Somehow, despite all of the planning, we were always behind. Items still needed to be gathered. The car that was supposed to hold exactly what we needed for the drive was becoming a negotiation in real time. Tension was building.

As kids, my younger brother and I depended on our mom’s help packing (while she was trying to get her own bags finalized). My older sister typically managed her own things.

When the stated departure hour had come and gone, my dad would make an announcement. Then, he would wait. Next, from somewhere downstairs, would come the frustrated bellow that he was going to McDonald's to pick up breakfast and that we had better be ready when he returned.

He was never gone long enough.

Once he got back, he assessed the situation, and started grabbing things. Whatever was left. Whatever you weren't finished with. Into the car it went, ready or not.

This is where tears occasionally made an appearance. Mine specifically.

Looking back, I cannot tell this story without laughing. But what I can also see now, that I couldn't see then, is what was actually happening beneath the surface of all that beautiful chaos.

It would be easy to look at those departure mornings and diagnose an interpersonal problem.

Five people with different rhythms, operating under pressure, occasionally getting snippy with each other. Someone on the outside might reasonably conclude this family needed help working together. A family therapist would have had a field day.

It would also be fair to look at the strategy. My dad certainly did. Each move brought a revised approach. And yet the results on departure day looked remarkably similar each time.

Both observations are reasonable. Neither gets to the root of it.

Because the friction lived at the decision layer, the space between the strategy we had and the execution we were attempting.

At the decision layer, two critical things were never fully resolved. First, implicit assumptions. Each of us was operating with a different understanding of what the plan required from us individually. Those assumptions surfaced mid-morning, often in the middle of a disagreement, when it became clear we had each been solving for something slightly different.

Second, unclear ownership and authority. My mom managed the packing in the days before the departure. As a kid, she was the one I looked to on the final morning for direction.

So, when my dad would step in and start making those final calls, the authority structure shifted without announcement. I no longer knew where to turn. Thus, my response was what you might expect from a child whose world was turned upside down.

Neither of my parents was wrong. They were trying to divide and conquer under real time pressure. But the unclear authorities, sitting on a foundation of implicit assumptions, turned a sound strategy into a chaotic morning that looked, from the outside, like a people problem.

It wasn't. It was a decision layer problem.

And my dad, an Army officer who had navigated far more complex and consequential decision environments than a family move, was confounded by it. It wasn’t about the strategy or the family members. The structural conditions that would have enabled the Rochelle family to cleanly execute his strategy were not fully established.

These same challenges show up inside every leadership team trying to move a decision from the room into results.

Dad, I would not trade a single one of those moving mornings. They taught me more than you probably intended. 🙂

To every father and father figure reading this, thank you. The way you show up, stay steady, and keep moving forward (even when the car isn't fully loaded) is not lost on those watching you. We love you and we are grateful.

And to everyone shaped by a father or father figure whose leadership still shows up in how you think and lead today, I hope you make time to share that with them.

Until Next Sunday,

Shawnette Rochelle, MBA, PCC
Founder, Excellence Unbounded
Decision Architecture for Executive Teams

If you’re curious to learn more about my work with executive teams, you can find it here.

If you want to have a conversation to learn more, schedule it here.