Transition Interview Series Part 5: Brian Meese, Fourth Generation Army Artillery, Mentor, and Product Manager at Cisco Systems.

Figuring out your first role post-military, leading civilian teams vs. soldiers, and the acceptance of what you're leaving behind on active-duty.

Approaching part five of the TRANSITION Interview Series, it felt intuitive to search for recurring themes in parts 1-4 that might serve as subject matter for a potential new project. I found numerous commonalities, however, the idea of mentorship and the occurrence mentors seems to be consistent.

What does that say about us as Veterans, that perhaps we rely on mentors more so than our civilian peers?

For one thing, I think it demonstrates a willingness to replace lived experiences and the comfort of first-hand information with trust. We seem confident that our fellow Vet has our interest at heart and will spare us from making the same mistakes they did. That seems to be good enough, even in the most consequential of circumstances.

To better understand this, I thought it beneficial to end the series with someone I consider to be a mentor, but more importantly someone I consider to be very well versed in the process of change. Someone who’s sat on both sides of the table as both a mentor and mentee.

Brian Meese is a Product Manager in Strategy and Planning at Cisco as well as a fourth generation Army Artillery Officer. Aside from his role as a PM, Brian has volunteered countless hours to organizations that assist in Vet transition, such as Military in Sales and Leadership (MISL) and VETS. I enjoyed our conversation and his ability to articulate a few of the not so obvious and potentially humbling aspects of military transition.

I know a bit about what you've been up to at Cisco but not as much about your military career. How long were you in? 

I did a little over 6 years on active duty and then active reserve for another four. I just recently switched to the "Individual Ready" reserve, actually.

I also attended West Point, so there was that time as well, I guess. That's where I grew up; I'm actually a fourth-generation Army Vet.

You're kidding? 

Yeah, I grew up in New York right near the campus about an hour north of New York City. College ended up being closer to home than high school was.

Wow. So, the oldest Veteran in your lineage, what was his career like?

Most of them were reservists. My great-grandfather and his father served in the Coastal Artillery and spent most of their careers in California. My grandfather was part of ROTC and commissioned as an officer in artillery also, which is what I did.

My dad was the only one who was active duty until the time he retired. Also Artillery.

Four generations of Artillery officers, that's cool. How was your experience in the Army generally speaking? Doing the math on time, I presume you deployed to Afghanistan? Iraq?

I did. I ended up getting stationed at Ft. Carson out in Colorado and deployed to Afghanistan as a Fires Officer. Nine months, just north of Kandahar, at a place called Shah Wali Kot.

Got it. When you returned from that deployment, were you pretty into it, what ideas did you have about your long-term career in the Army? Any thoughts about getting out?

No, not at all. I thought I would make a career of it. My platoon had been attached to 7th Special Forces Group, and you know, you spend 7 months deployed with an SF Team, you're thinking, this is the coolest job in the world.

My plan initially was to try and get over there, to an SF unit, but the more we talked about what that lifestyle would look like, I decided to stay over on the conventional side.

Anyway. When I returned from my second deployment which was to Europe, my stateside time was scheduled for just a year. That's when I thought, maybe I want to get off this year on, year off thing. So I decided to go to the O3-level career course and reset a little bit. So from Colorado, we moved to Ft. Moore ,GA and I did my year-long PME.

That makes sense. This is a pre-command leadership course type deal?

That’s right. Funny thing is, you come out of there, you're just so fired up to lead soldiers. All you do is talk about leadership and the philosophical underpinnings of war and philosophy and I show up at Joint Base Lewis-McCord ready to go, and they tell me it's about a 38-month wait for command.

No kidding. Hurry up and wait, I guess. 

Right? So that's when the wheels started turning on getting out. It was such an unknown though, growing up a fourth-generation army brat, you know?

I remember one day, the Commander of my new command calls us into his office, he tells all these Captains he has to fill a role in Afghanistan to support the Special Operations Headquarters, doing fires support or something like that.

I remember thinking, this is great, this is me, this is what I do. I had been home 14 months or so by this point, and I thought, I'll go knock this out, and when I get back, it will help me get a command billet. So, I'll never forget, I drove home that day, and in the course of a forty-five-minute drive, it all the sudden felt very selfish to me, to voluntarily take off for 6-months because it was something I wanted to do to help my career.

Basically, it went from how am I going to tell my wife I volunteered to go to Afghanistan, to I should talk to my wife about the possibility of getting out. That change of mindset told me a lot about my future in the Army.

Interesting. I suspect to some who read this, that would sound spontaneous, but it makes a lot of sense. A career in the military is going to present that situation countless times; I bet that wasn't easy. At that point, did you have any idea what you wanted to do on the other side? 

It was hard. I had taken the Army very seriously, and you know, I liked leading soldiers and enjoyed it. The Reserves really helped make that decision. I could get back in and even deploy if I didn't enjoy life on the other side.

Initially, I looked at getting into consulting. I liked solving problems, and I thought I wanted to get into business strategy or something along those lines, consulting more or less.

I reached out to this guy, a mentor and former Army officer. He was about ten years older than me, and I told him I wanted to be a Business Strategy Consultant. I'll always remember, he says to me, "You know almost nothing about business strategy. I know you like solving problems, but no one will hire you to solve their business's problems because you have no track record of doing so."

That was some of the best advice I ever got, maybe not for its level of truth, but more so because it was just a painful fact I needed to hear. He tells me, "Go find a good company, get a job in sales for a year, learn the fundamentals, learn to work with civilians, and then look for a shift into strategy or consulting."

That's interesting, something I've thought a lot about previously. What about active-duty service makes us feel ready to triage private sector problems immediately after separation? It's a common pursuit, it seems. I totally agree with what your mentor said, but at the same time, if we look at some of the most successful Veteran business leaders, most are above average when it comes to strategy and problem-solving and they seem to derive a great deal from their military experience in doing so. So there’s something there.

Yeah, it's a conversation I come across frequently. You'll talk to a guy, and he's figured out, "Hey, I was a Battalion Executive Officer. I can be a Business Operations Manager."

I would say, yes, you probably could, but you need some fundamentals, and there's a difference between what's possible and what will be a positive career experience. I tell guys and girls in the Cisco Military in Sales and Leadership (MISL) program, you have tons of knowledge; there's no denying that. What you don't have is the mental models to apply that knowledge. There's a curve to unlocking that knowledge and making it relevant to the private sector.

And that would be the same for business leaders if they tried to come over and solve military strategy problems.

So, you get this advice and decide to pursue a tech role to get some experience; how much of a priority was location and compensation? 

I was trying to decide between the Raleigh/Durham area and Colorado. I got some advice from a guy named Brad Morse, who used to be the global leader of Cisco’s Vet program.

He tells me, “Make a reverse timeline of all your filters. Location, job type, pay, companies, and then rack and stack all of them with a decision date.”

I became really focused on this. At the four-month from separation mark, I knew I wanted to be a in sales, at one of these five companies in one of these two locations and make this much money.

At the three-month mark I still had nothing lined up, so I made it a bit broader. Work in one of these two locations in this industry and make no less than this much money. 

At the two-month mark, still nothing lined up, so I removed a few more requirements. Getting more and more broad, and eventually it was to the point where your filters are, "I need a job that supports my family."

That was just my experience. I know a lot of Vets are able to identify a role that fits within their dozen or so requirements.

That's smart. Was this on Excel or all in your head?

I had 3x5 note cards for each opportunity.

One time I remember, I interviewed for this role in Boulder, and at the end, they asked me what salary expectations I had. I said, "Well, I make about $90k now, and I'd like to be in that range."

I had no idea what I was saying and what the cost of living was in Boulder was. Immediately, they say, "Yeah, okay! We can make that work, I think."

I researched what the role should pay, and it was almost double that.

Oh no, maybe a blessing you didn’t take that role. Is this issue something you see often? Talking to guys through MISL? 

It is. It comes up. I think sometimes Vets make the mistake of looking at another Veteran who's two or three years separated, and they think, "Well, this person makes x, so I should make x."

But they don't see the amount of hard work that goes into those first 2-3 years. Those first two years can be brutal and there's the potential to be largely underpaid if you look at it from a per-hour basis. Some roles are going to require some really hard work in order to catch up to the experience level of your non-Veteran peers.

This whole piece is tricky. You owe it to yourself to try for the highest compensation you can get for your family.

With the folks I mentor, I encourage them to get in the door and start looking around and focusing more on what job they want to do versus making decisions based on salary.

I've given the same advice. If someone tells me money is their number one motivator, that may change, but that’s rarely ever the case. Personally, it felt like incremental income increases in the military were pretty impactful, going from e4 to e5 and so on. But in the civilian world, it seems income changes, which are much more significant comparatively, feel more inconsequential in terms of happiness and overall life satisfaction. And that would make sense thinking about economies of scale, but it's something that's taken me a few years to realize. 

Right. I had a really smart person tell me one time, “It doesn't matter how fast you climb the ladder. If it's the wrong ladder, you'll be unhappy at the top of it.” I try to remember that now.

You told me that once, and it resonates. So, it sounds like you were pretty focused on transition in terms of vocation. This interview series, not by design, has focused a lot on the non-vocational side of transition and the mental health aspect of leaving the military. How were you doing personally through all this? 

Yeah, I appreciate that question. For us, there were a few things that helped. For the first time in forever, we were able to plug into our church and be around the same groups of people for more than a year. We got licensed to become foster parents. I think those two components helped replace that loss of connection that comes with no longer being a "soldier" per se.

I realized at some point, it's okay to maintain your interests and participate in them despite no longer being in the military. I still like reading books about military history, I still like leadership, and I still like connecting people. These are all things I enjoyed in the military, and I can still do them. Depending on what you did in the military, I think that can be easier or harder, but that's something that helped me.

I also went to grad school pretty early on, so I remember, I was pretty busy.

You went to grad school while you were working at Cisco? 

That's right. I found an asynchronous program at Johns Hopkins University that worked well into my schedule. It wasn't easy. I think I did the whole program between 4 and 6 AM.

Good for you. One question I often get about going to grad school is, "How often do you use that knowledge now?" I think a lot of complexity is required to answer that, but I'll ask you: Do you recognize what you learned at Hopkins in your role today? 

Yeah, I do. I ended up studying Public Administration. I was between an MBA and an MPA. Ultimately, I thought, if I get laid off and this goes sideways, would I rather move back into corporate America and business? Or would I rather lead a small-town or municipal organization?

I ended up going with the MPA with a focus on finance. Fast forward, my ability to look at data and spreadsheets and find chokepoints in business analytics was really strengthened by that coursework.

I know you eventually became a manager and led a team here at Cisco. What was that experience like, and what are some differences between military and civilian in that regard? 

I found a lot of similarities and a few things that just don't translate.

Having a command philosophy was the same. I articulated 12 points across two broad categories with my team: "This is what I expect from you, and this is what you can expect from me." That seemed to work well, and that's all leadership strategy I took away from the Army. 

It was stressful being in a position to affect my team's pay, setting goals and incentives and whatnot. That doesn't really exist in the military. As a sales manager, if you mis-goal someone, it's going to impact their family. I remember that feeling heavy.

That's true. I've never considered that. 

One thing I could have done better was communication across the organization. In the Army, you don't need to broadcast your team's accomplishments to adjacent teams. If you accomplish your mission, that speaks for itself, people know.

In the civilian world, you need to be an external advocate and sing the praises of your team. That’s the way people can get raises, get promoted, get more budget, etc.

I was managing a team that was involved in a pilot program. Being successful is first and foremost, but if no one knows you're successful, it may just die, you know?

Man, that's really insightful. It sounds like you got a lot of that experience you set out to find. 

I think I did. One thing I found that really differentiates leadership in the military from the corporate world is the fact that in the Army, I led junior officers who were doing a job I did previously. That makes it easier. You're very empathetic to your subordinates because you used to be them.

In civilian leadership, you don't always have that privilege. More commonly, you don't know the answers, and it's your job to coach them vice have all the answers.

I think that can be challenging for Vets who transition right into management roles, regardless of rank.

That makes a lot of sense. I know you volunteer a lot of your time in this space. When it comes to mentorship, is there anything you've changed or changed your mind on?

That's a good one. You know, I used to agree with the whole network, network, network advice when it comes to seeking mentorship. I think that advice is okay, but not great. Everyone you talk to isn't going to be your mentor.

What you really want is for someone to invest themselves in your life and your well-being. That can't happen with 100 people. There's nothing wrong with asking someone a question, thanking them for their advice, and moving on. Mentor/mentee relationships need to develop naturally, and a lot of work needs to be invested on both sides. If that work feels unnatural or painful, that person probably isn't your mentor.

I couldn't agree more. I think LinkedIn is perhaps partly responsible for that. I think you can get into this, how many “connections” can I create, mindset. I appreciate this Brian, and all you've done for Vet's since transitioning yourself. 

Last question, same one I've asked everyone. If you're talking to a young Brian Meese, getting out of the Army in six months, what would you want to tell him? 

When I decided to get out, I sent the General for whom I’d been an aide-de-camp this note. I said you know, "Hey, Sir, I love the Army, but this is the right choice for me and my family right now."

He sent me a note back, saying almost point blank, "Hey Brian, I'm happy for you, and you will do great in whatever you do, but you will never find anything as gratifying as leading soldiers." It really hit me hard, but he was right. What's important, though, is that I'm okay with that. 

Point is, if you're not okay with that or unwilling to accept it, maybe you shouldn't get out. Maybe not everyone will agree with what that General told me, but I do, and it's helped me find peace. 

That's powerful. These are exactly the ideas I'm looking to capture for this series. Thank you for doing this. 

If you’ve enjoyed this series, please consider subscribing as it helps this content reach more people and more Veterans.