George Wunderlich - Mission Awareness

Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for. Their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Welcome to the show. Uh, my first guest is going to be with us in just a second, but first I wanted to remind you that you can listen to over 500, that's a lot, 500 interviews, 1 minute highlights, bits of information from advisers, authors, and thought leaders. Now to make it easy for you, we've put them all into 35 different category file folders on the Audio library at exeoachradio.com. So you can click on there, find a topic you're interested in, and listen to great speakers, authors, again, advisers and thought leaders on a variety of topics. So my first guest today is George Wonderlich, and he's joining us from the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Maryland. And in addition to being a museum, they are the home. Of the Letterman Institute, which, which specializes in advanced military medical management training and corporate management and mission awareness training. So we're going to talk to George and learn what he's learned about his training, and I think it's going to be a very interesting interview. So George, welcome to the show. Thanks very much for joining us this morning. No, thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. George, the National Museum of Civil War medicine, it sounds intriguing. I'm sure there was some very interesting methods employed during the Civil War, and I myself have been back into the area of Shepherdstown, where I have some families that live there and seen some of the battlefields. I think it's a fascinating area. It really is. Tell us about the National Museum. Well, we're kind of an unusual place because I think most people come here with this idea that Everything they need to know about Civil War medicine they learned in the movies and quite frankly, it was either not terribly exciting or way too gross for anyone to to really want to think about. And so a lot of people are shocked to find that we've we've expanded our operations just in the last 10 years from one museum to 3 and the reason for it is, is although historians really haven't been highly tuned to it. Um, the Civil War was not only a watershed but actually a revolution in American medicine, both scientifically but more importantly organizationally. And what we see in the organizational restructuring of medicine, both in the Union and Confederate side, we see surviving 150 years and one of the things I tell people is how many programs that have been started in the military 150 years later are still considered state of the art. And they have a hard time answering that question. I say, well, I can name one, and that's emergency medicine and evacuation because we're still running those protocols 150 years later and that's really the the beginning step for us in in what turned into the military and corporate leadership training that we now offer. Yeah, some of these battles just had massive numbers of casualties, and they, they probably invented things like triage out of this and, you know, uh just the organization of of emergency medicine like you said. Yeah, it was, it was one of those things. I mean if you think about it, just the Battle of Antigua, which is still the bloodiest day in American history. In a single day we have over 6800 men killed. In total we have 23,000 casualties. Now that's more than 9/11. That's more than D-Day. And you're talking about unlike 9/11 where every fire station, every firefighter, dozens of modern professional, well equipped hospitals, literally thousands of doctors and nurses who were in the New York City area were there to take care of those folks. We're talking about the middle of a cornfield. in the middle of Maryland in 1862, where the numbers of caregivers are much smaller, the numbers of ambulances are much smaller, and, and what came out of it, you're right, was triage and what came out of it was an ambulance system, but even more importantly, what came out of it was. Tying a direct relationship between what is a field hospital and basically that's where we get our modern emergency room at at every hospital today. But what is a field hospital and how do we tie that field hospital's chain of command to logistics? How do we tie it to communications? How do we tie it to records keeping? How do we tie it to the, uh, the movement of, of patients from one area of care to another area of care further from the battlefield. And what's really amazing is the system we used today was basically invented by one man, a gentleman named Major Jonathan Letterman, and his system is still the basic framework that we use, whether we're talking about the streets of New York City or Boston during the Boston bombing or whether we're talking about the battlefield of Afghanistan. What you saw two years ago at the Boston bombing in April of 2013, what you literally We saw on television with the ambulances and how people were treating the wounded was a direct result of the orders of October of 1862. And so one of the things we like to delve into is how did he come up with it? What were his strategies, and then more importantly, how personally was he able to carry off such an incredible plan. Against all odds, the army really wasn't for it, politicians weren't really for it, and his subordinate officers weren't really for it. And then, you know, again you've got to look at it in the army, he's a major, he's a middle manager at best. And how did a middle manager come up with a plan so unique that 150 years later it's still the basis for every major hospital in the United States? It is, it's mind boggling, as I'm thinking as you're talking, it's it's amazing the obstacles they had to overcome with regards to what they had available for communication, for transportation, the medicine that they had, and how to get that to the right number of bodies. How was this, was this a master plan that was well executed or was it just on the spot, you know, let's let's deal with what we have to deal with. And that's the great thing about this this. It was a master plan and it was done in two steps. First, it was done on in August of 1862 with the development of a command structure and a specific series of duties for an organized ambulance department and then in October of 1862 tying an ambulance system to a master plan of what is a field hospital, how will it be commanded, what are the duties of the people involved, how will they carry out those duties, how do we supply them. How do we communicate with them and what are the what are the records look like and so it was actually two master plans built into one that would eventually be passed into federal law and the one thing that set Letterman aside was he understood that the army had a distinct mission. And that military medicine also had a distinct mission that was not the same as the army's even though they were in the army. So he understood really for the first time the army has a mission and military medicine has a submission. And that submission understanding was, was vital, you know, in the same way we think about it today, you know, our corporation has a mission and every one of our departments, every one of our manufacturing facilities, every one of our sales offices has a submission that is very specific to support that overall mission. And then Letterman brought in a third rank, if you will, personally submitting himself to that mission, kind of pushing his own ego aside. And and committing himself so deeply to the mission that even people who didn't like what he wrote really had no they had no way to complain that he was only doing it for his own self-aggrandizement and because of it he was able to knock down a lot of the walls of opposition simply because people were looking at and saying there's nothing in it for him. There's he's doing this all for the mission of saving our country. We can trust him and believe that this really is a good system, um, not simply meant to to to personally benefit him. And those three things understanding mission, submission, and then the personal submission to it that's what really set him aside and to clarify that you and you had written this in your show notes too was that that we have mission we have sub dash mission so the the mission beneath the mission right this or or submission submissions there must be multiple submissions and then submission as one word submission to the cause or you know this is you will you will you will. Do this because we need you to do this we have to submit to this, right? That's very interesting is that go ahead. No, please go ahead. Well, I was gonna say is that was that typical protocol? I mean, had this ever been done before in the military where you had to take two disciplines and merge them together um and it seems like this came together rather quickly, uh, from you mentioned August 62 to to October of 1862. You had these different, you know, you had this plan being put together within a very brief period in preparation for what was very necessary. Yeah, and it's funny because it did come together very quickly and by December when we have our next really major battle at Fredericksburg, by December of 1862, the surgeons are writing this new system is working well. Many lives are being saved, you know, we're seeing much, much better results very, very quickly after the After the introduction, but this really is the first time when it comes to medicine. This is the first time where there's a realization that we have to take two things that are completely disparate saving lives and unfortunately in, you know, the way the army fights a war taking lives. How do, how can those things possibly go together and quite frankly for the first, you know, 87 years of our republic, it didn't go together and medicine was an afterthought. After Letterman, more and more medicine became, you know, it really came to its prominence where people said we can't go and fight without the right medicine. We can't go into the battlefield without providing the right level of care. And of course we see that today where we have minuscule compared to other wars we have minuscule deaths as a result of fighting, and part of the reason, not all, but a major part of that is We don't go into fights anymore unless we know we have the medical support to save the lives of of our men and women, uh, in the military, and that changed with, with this, with this war, with the Civil War, that was one of the quantum changes that came about. So really thinking with the end in mind, really thinking down the road on these types of things and the preparation. And the coordination of all the different now what kind of, what kind you mentioned Letterman was getting a lot of pushback or he was getting, you know, some, some pushback from the military on some of these things, I guess. Is that what was happening in fact or did they not, did they get it what he was trying to do here, I guess is my question. That that is a great question and some people really did get it. General McClellan, who was in charge of one of the larger armies right here in the in the Washington DC Richmond area, he got it, but a lot of people didn't, and part of the reason they didn't is, and of course we see this in corporations all over the place. Letterman was changing the culture, so there was pushback on on cultural change. Letterman was changing the way money was handled because now the medical department was going to need a larger slice of the military budget, so people who were worried about budgets were concerned, you know, what's the payback, what's the return on investment. As we would say it today, so they were pushing back on that, and they were pushing back on the fact that not only was he changing culture, but he was changing who would be in charge of certain things in the military like the ambulances which had been under field control by the quartermaster Department would now be under medical control. He was taking assets away from people. And you know, anytime we take assets from one department and we give it to another, there are jealousies, there are, there are concerns, and the one thing that I think really helped him get past all of those those questions and concerns and petty jealousies was again everyone pretty much knew it wasn't about him, it was about the mission. That was one thing. But the other thing we don't think of doctors as salesmen, but doctors are some of the best salesmen in the world. You know, I'm going to convince you as a doctor that I'm gonna have to cut your body open with a knife and plow around inside you to make you better. That takes a certain degree of salesmanship and Letterman as a doctor understood how to communicate the mission in such a way that he overcame people's opposition, which is exactly what we're looking for from sales people today. Is how do we overcome that opposition? How do we overcome their questions? Letterman did that magnificently, and he's one of the first doctors we see who's able to make that leap from just doing a job to making it about the mission and then make the leap begin to how do I sell that to the politicians and the army. He really did a masterful job. The guy is really one of the perfect case studies for modern management, for modern sales, and for modern mission awareness. Yeah, I would imagine that that's a good point. So you are a vestige speaker, so you speak to Visage, of course, is the largest CEO group in the world, but so you speak to groups of CEOs about how they can take this very interesting story and development from the Civil War and use it for their own benefit. Overlay this and say what can we learn from all of this and what we learn is that you have to start with the mission and then and and sell the mission and then move to the sub the submissions and then get people to submit to everything is that in a nutshell uh that in a nutshell is it and that's exactly, you know, you put it so, so very distinctly that's exactly what we do we do it like I said for the military we do it for corporations through visage and believe it or not. Um, I also teach part time at a at a Catholic seminary, and I teach this the very same method to men and women who are going into ministry and, um, and you know it's really, it is one of the universal things that no matter what type of organization, whether it's for profit or nonprofit, military, private sector, even government, this system works and there's just, there's no way around how well it works. Yeah, and there's a tremendous amount of strategic convincing, or call it selling if you will, every step of the way, and I would imagine that your tactics have to be adapted to each of the constituents that you're trying to convince or sell of these again, the mission, the submission. And or submissions and the and the submission to the mission and the submission, it's fascinating really is it's, it's a cool thing and you know it's funny because we talk a lot about change management and here's an example from 150 years ago of how somebody really pulled off change management even though he probably never heard those words put together in his life. Well, there was a lot of buzzwords that they had not heard at that point. That's what makes this so fascinating is that can you imagine as a business owner out there for my listeners out there, can you imagine being in this position where you have to to move so many minds around a concept of of something that had never been done before and prepare for a massive situation that was probably bound to happen, but they probably didn't. No, I mean, nobody knew what would happen, but they knew it was going to be bloody. I mean, I've heard groups areas like Shepherdstown, West Virginia, the whole town turned into a hospital based on the battles that were happening there, the tremendous number of casualties. So it's what a, what a difficult endeavor. And now we have, now you have the blueprint to kind of work from to help business owners up today work with that. George, when you talk with business owner groups, um. I'm sure they're they're intrigued by the story. I'm sure they get everybody loves a good Civil War story, but what do they walk away from? Is there, is there a template that you've come up with to help them work through these issues? How does it work? There is one of the things that we try and do is, is we bring them, we allow all of the people in the world. To kind of bring their own stories forth and what we do is we give them a template by actually letting the whole room once they've heard the story um kind of chime in on one another's difficulties, you know, whether it's uh you know somebody in manufacturing talking about that they're having problems getting the divisions to work together. I've got one client. Um, that's a hospitality group that owns a chain of of fast food restaurants and they own Marriott hotel franchises and one of the problems that they've always had is how do they get the people from one division to talk to the people in the other division to support the overall mission and what it turned out was nobody really understood the overall mission of the corporation. That was the problem. So what we do is we, we talk through these things and then the other thing that I leave them is we ask a very series of pointed questions. That they can jot down their own answers to, but they can also jot down what they're hearing around the room. We really try and make this interactive in such a way that they can then actually begin to make up a plan right while they're sitting there listening to other people based on the issues that they see in their own business. So it's a, it's a very interactive discussion based model rather than a lecture base. And um it it really directs people towards what are the issues that are you're seeing, you know, taking the Letterman plan and overlaying it with your business, what are some areas that you can work on and then we're we're gonna talk in a group in such a way that everyone can hear uh what everybody's thinking and it's, it's really been uh been pretty amazing. Yeah, by putting it in perspective, but going back to these, these stories, and I know you have tons of stories, and unfortunately we don't have time for for any more today's stories, but I'd love to hear some more stories about the obstacles, the challenges that were overcome that turned into what we see today as modern medicine. But taking from that, you know, everybody has challenges. Everybody has an organization that they need to manage and put together and understanding that that you need to start with your mission. Your submission beneath that mission and then working on having your your people submit to all of that it makes total sense. It really does all in a nutshell. So nice job, George. how do our our listeners get in touch with you and learn more and maybe talk to you about being a visage speaker for their group? Well one of the easiest ways they call us get us the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. We're in Frederick, Maryland. If you just do a Google search on Civil War medicine, will be the first thing that comes up. And you can also give me a call here at the museum 301-695-1864 and talk to me directly because one of the other things I like to do is I like to talk to the groups ahead of time and find out what their specific needs are because you're right there are a ton of stories and then I choose the stories that are best going to convey uh what each individual group needs so these are all customized so I'd love to love to be able to just talk to people directly and we'll custom tailor something directly to the needs of your group. Don't you think that would be a fascinating topic, listeners, just to have George come and talk to your group about some of these Civil War medicine stories, just, just the challenges they overcame. I, I'm Jazz, Georgia. I'm really excited. I thank you for joining us, and I hope that you can come on the show again in the future and share some more stories with us. I think it'd be fascinating for our listeners, and we can learn a lot from this. So thank you so much for joining us today. Bill, thank you, and I'd love to do that. I hope we talk again soon. All right, we're gonna take a short break for right now and we're gonna be right back after this with another guest. So please stay with us, we'll be right back. Just thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit Planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted adviser to create a BEI plan for you or visit us at exitlannning.com. That's exitlannning.com. 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