Being a leader requires putting others before oneself, essentially being selfless and sacrificing one’s own comforts for the good of their team. In a certain light, the roles of leader as either a facility manager or Marine Corps officer benefit from this approach, as both leadership roles necessitate self-sacrifice and humbleness.
To explore this parallel more, Ryan McCool, founder of McCool Leadership Management and former aviation logistics officer for the U.S. Marine Corps, will present the session “It's Not About You!: What Facilities Management Leaders Can Learn from Military Training” at NFMT 2025 in Baltimore from March 25 to 27, 2025.
FacilitiesNet: What specific leadership principles from Marine Corps officer training do you think are most applicable to facilities management, and why?
Ryan McCool: The number one trait applicable to facilities management is selflessness and the concept that officers eat last. In facilities management a lot of the time we focus on infrastructure, roofing, energy, cost savings and sustainability, which are all very important topics. However, if you don't have a workforce in your facility that is willing to go above and beyond for you, then you likely won't be successful.
Whereas if you want the privilege to lead people into very dangerous environments, you need to put your ego and comfort aside. Either way, that makes your team want to follow you into difficult situations, and as we know, with facilities management there's always natural disasters and different challenges that they face. You need a team of people who are willing to go above and beyond for you, and I think selflessness creates that.
FacilitiesNet: How can the tools and strategies from Marine Corps training help facilities leaders navigate and thrive in such high-pressure environments?
McCool: One of the most important principles from Marine Corps training is something called the 70 percent solution. So, it means having a bias for action in that there will always be a lot of unknowns, a lot of ambiguity. However, if you can take 70 percent of the information and formulate a decision and move forward, you'll likely be successful in what you're trying to implement.
Too often in facilities projects and project management, it takes an exorbitant amount of time to make decisions, and that holds up the entire project. Though, if you have leaders in the workforce who have a strong bias for action, and they know that they’re never going to have 100 percent of the information that they want. Despite this, they say they have a goal, then they take information they have, make a decision and charge forward.
FacilitiesNet: Can you share examples of how facilities management leaders can embody this value of selfless leadership to inspire their teams and retain top talent?
McCool: One example is corporate parking spots. So, it's no surprise and it's not uncommon that the highest leaders in the organization have dedicated parking spots and dedicated garages a lot of times. Every day when the average employee walks by and sees a dedicated parking spot for the vice president of facilities management they’ll end up thinking that person must think they're special. It starts to create a little bit of animosity.
Contrast that with a leader who says the parking spots are for everybody. If you want a good parking spot, show up early like everybody else. Just because they have the title of vice president or oversee the entire facility doesn’t mean they’re special.
Again, it’s not about your comfort and you getting a good parking spot just because you have a high title. It's about all of the little things like that. While they may seem insignificant, they can really motivate a workforce to either want to follow you or detract based on how you handle those situations.
FacilitiesNet: In what ways can facilities management organizations cultivate agility and resilience in their leaders to prepare them for the unexpected challenges of the future?
McCool: The principle we learned in the Marine Corps was to never fall in love with your plan. In the Marine Corps, leaders plan, plan and plan some more. However, we know that no plan survives first contact with the enemy and in facilities management it's no different.
We can have a great plan as to how our facilities will operate or how much it's going to cost to run our facilities, but ultimately things change. Again, it could be a natural disaster, or it could be an energy price increase. Though, the concept of never falling in love with your plan is about having the mindset of improvising, adapting and overcoming.
In the Marine Corps, you're constantly instilled with that mentality of nothing's going to go according to plan. Improvise, adapt, overcome – and if you go into a situation like that, you'll be more agile than perhaps your competitors or other industries. If you have that agile mindset, you'll be better off than if you have a mindset of no change or more of a rigid mindset.
To learn more about adapting tenants of Marine Corps training into facility operations, be sure to check out McCool’s session at NFMT 2025. Register for NFMT here.
Jeff Wardon, Jr., is the assistant editor for the facilities market.
