Too Many Generals
Too Many Generals
An RA Field Note
Jocko's Take on Heavy Upper Officers
I watched this and had the following thoughts, and wanted to explore with you.
We fought a two-front world war with fewer generals and admirals than we carry on the books today.
Sit with that one for a second.
Jocko and Chris were talking about the Pentagon. I wasn't. About 90 seconds into that clip, I stopped hearing "Department of Defense" and started hearing most every restoration company I've walked into over the last 5 years. Two to six million in revenue. Two to four layers between the owner and the specialist holding the moisture meter, and in the best position to get that five-star review. A coordinator who coordinates the coordinators. And an owner who genuinely cannot tell you what half those people did last Tuesday.
You didn't decide or design to build that. Nobody really does. It just naturally happens unless we have a system for growth.
How restoration companies get top-heavy without meaning to
Start with the one story that stings. The case or experience you look back on and try to avoid most.
You don't trust the bottom of your org to make a call. Your people aren't dumb, we know that, but because you never trained them to make decisions. A tech encounters a question onsite they can't answer, so they call their lead. The lead won't quite own it either, so he kicks it to a coordinator. The coordinator loops in the ops manager. Four people made a decision that a trained tech should've made right away.
So what do you do about it? You don't train the tech. You add another body above him to catch the calls he can't make. And now you've got the layer.
That's the journey, the habit. Every level you refuse to empower, you cover with a level of command. The bloat isn't an accident or bad luck; it's the tax you pay for not developing the people who are best to do the work you are hired for. You built more chain of command because it felt faster than building capability. It wasn't faster. It just moved the cost onto the org chart, where you might not notice until lots of money disappears.
We can blame lots of things (carrier pricing control, lack of skilled labor), but those are excuses. Because many have overcome those very things.
Jocko named the second piece, and I don't think he softened it enough. He said the military is a human organization, so human nature takes over. People build their piece bigger than the next guy's piece, because a bigger piece means a higher chain of command and a better spot for them personally. Read that again with your own leadership team in mind. Your ops manager isn't asking for two more coordinators because the work demands them. They are asking because headcount is what he thinks will buy him more time.
Then there's the compounding, and Chris and Jocko walked through the cleanest version of it I've heard. Dorsey started Twitter with about three people. It grows. He hires engineers, then more engineers, and eventually he hires somebody to run something that didn't really matter at all to what they were meant to be. That person hires a team. That team hires five more. Musk walks in years later and cuts three-quarters of the company, and the thing keeps running. Hmm.
One unnecessary hire is never one unnecessary hire. It's a seed.
And the last piece is the one I see most in our world: what I call scar tissue. Every single layer in your company traces back to one specific bad day. One project that went sideways. One adjuster who screamed at you. One missed deadline that cost you a great estimate that lands a new relationship. So you added a checkpoint, a reviewer, and a second signature. Which was the right call that week? But mostly unnecessary because it was a one-off or a lack of a process or standard.
The wound healed. Nobody ever scheduled the removal.
What management bloat is costing your restoration company
Your juniors never develop judgment. They can't make a call, because there's always somebody above them whose job is to make the call. They have responsibility, but little authority. So they don't build the instinct. Which proves you need the layer. Which is why the layer stays. That loop will run for a decade if you let it.
You're funding paperwork instead of skill. Every dollar that goes to administrative capacity is a dollar not going into training the one capability that lets you charge more and defend a file when somebody comes asking for it back. You are underinvesting in the exact thing that makes you hard to replace as a brand.
Your best people leave. Jocko's point about elite talent is the one restoration owners might underrate the most. The people who are actually good want hard problems. They do not want the process. That kid who could be running your complex losses in three years is going to your competitor.
Your org chart stops looking like your vision. This is the quiet one. Add up your coordinators, your file reviewers, your compliance lead, and your program account manager. Now ask yourself honestly whether that structure was designed around drying buildings or around satisfying somebody else's needs. If your org chart mirrors the TPA's org chart, you're not running a restoration company anymore. You are subsidizing a Cartel called Big Insurance.
"Yeah, but I can't just cut people"
No doubt. And I'm not going to pretend that's easy or that nobody gets hurt.
But here's the frame from that conversation that I think is worth more than anything else in the clip as I consumed it. Cut it. Expect some collateral damage. Do it now, or be forced to do it later, after possibly more costs. Maybe reputation.
And when something genuinely breaks, when it turns out that position was load-bearing after all, bring it back. It's not that big a deal.
That's it. That's the method I have always used. React to the numbers and take action. You've been treating this like an irreversible decision, which is why you've never made it. It isn't. It's a cheap experiment with options later.
And the protest IS the test. Everybody in the building will swear their position is essential the second you look at it closely. Fine. Show me the numbers. If the numbers hold, the role stays, and now you both know why it exists. If nobody can produce the numbers, you just learned something you couldn't have learned any other way.
Here's the question I'd hand you for every box on the chart: Does this role create restoration value, or does it exist to carry information between two people that could be one, with a little investment of training?
Decentralized command: where most owners screw it up
Here's where most "trim the fat" advice falls on its face, and I want you to hear this before you go do something dumb on Monday morning.
Jocko has a name for the fix, and it's the exact opposite of what your gut tells you to do. When something starts slipping, your instinct is to add command. Another manager, another checkpoint, another set of eyes. Decentralized Command says do the reverse. Push the decision DOWN to the person closest to it, and train them until they can own it. You don't build more command. You distribute the command you already have.
Decentralize command instead of building more command or management hurdles.
Which means cutting a layer only works if the authority moves down at the same time the layer comes out.
Pull the coordinator, keep every decision routed through the owner, and all you've done is move the same work onto fewer backs. Your PMs will drown, quality will dip, and in eight months, you'll hire the position back and tell yourself the experiment failed. It didn't fail. You did the math wrong. You went almost purely on your gut.
Jocko put the principle plainly: give people responsibility that matches their level. It doesn't take an admiral to do a job a major can do. It does not take your ops manager to approve a $400 equipment rental. It takes a tech you trained and told, "You've got this one."
So when the layer comes out, name who gets the call. Out loud, in writing, in the SOP. And build a second ladder while you're at it... lead tech, senior tech, master tech, with real pay bands attached, so that growing in your company doesn't require waiting for someone to leave.
What I'd actually do this week
Print your org chart. Actually print it. Not the one in the handbook, the real one. Don't have one, create one. Don't know where to start, contact me. [email protected]
Run every non-producing box through the question above. Be honest. You already know which two boxes made you flinch.
Pick one. Not five. One.
Before you touch it, write down who inherits each decision that role was making. If you can't name them, you're not ready. Go train that person first.
Give it 90 days. Watch what actually breaks instead of what you're afraid will break. It might shock you.
If it broke, bring it back. No shame in it. You bought information cheap.
Jocko said the goal was to bring things closer back down toward the battlefield.
In our business, the battlefield is a kitchen at eleven at night with a homeowner standing behind you asking if her house is going to be okay. Every layer you've built between yourself and that moment is a layer costing trust and credibility.
Some of them you need.
You don't need all of them.
Make sure to take the 8:13 and watch the video, because those guys are far better at illustrating it than I am.
Klark Brown | Restoration Advisers
