Fluid Roles, Rigid Tasks: Why Military Teamwork Doesn't Translate

By the time I was working as a Leading Petty Officer of an internal medicine department at Naval Hospital Okinawa, I thought I understood teamwork. Not the PowerPoint version, but the kind you learn in operational environments where the mission doesn't pause just because the schedule is full, or someone's late, or a piece of equipment is down.

At that time, and more generally throughout my military career, teamwork meant something very specific: If something must be done, someone does it. And if no one else can, you figure it out.

I didn't realize how unusual that definition was until years later, working in civilian tech.

This piece is my attempt to explain that contrast, not to judge either system, but to help service members and veterans understand why the civilian world feels so different, and to help civilians understand what we bring to the table.

What I Was Actually Doing (Without Knowing It)

At Naval Hospital Okinawa, on paper I was a Petty Officer managing the Internal Medicine department, a cardiovascular technologist, and a Leading Petty Officer responsible for evaluations, awards, scheduling, discipline, and training. In reality, any given day included troubleshooting equipment, preparing patients for procedures, handling staffing gaps, mentoring junior sailors, rewriting outdated SOPs, conducting diagnostic cardiac tests, coordinating outpatient cardiac labs and imaging, realigning appointment books when someone called out, and doing whatever ECG data cleanup no one else had time to do or could do.

Tasks blurred constantly because the mission didn't care about job descriptions.

It took me nearly two decades of working—in and out of the military, across tech and operations—to understand what I was actually doing back then. Looking back, I can now see that being a good teammate came down to four categories of value:

1. Do what others don't have time for but must be done.

2. Do what others see as essential but don't want to do.

3. Do what others know is needed but lack the skill for.

4. Do what others don't even realize is essential—but you do.

This isn't unique to healthcare or the Navy. It's the foundation of how military units function. Organizational researchers call this complementary advantage with situational ownership (Hackman, Leading Teams, 2002). In practice, it means high-functioning teams distribute strengths unevenly and depend on each other to fill gaps as they emerge.

TL;DR

1. The "Inversion"

• Military: Roles are fixed (rank/rate), but tasks are fluid (mission first).

• Tech/Civilian: Roles are fluid (skills/projects), but tasks are fixed (scope/ownership).

• Why it matters: Trying to operate with "fluid tasks" in a "fixed task" environment looks like a lack of focus rather than initiative.

2. The Trust Trap

• Military Trust: Built by jumping lanes to help a teammate ("I have your back").

• Civilian Trust: Built by respecting lane boundaries ("I trust you to handle your scope").

• The Shift: What felt like support in the service often feels like micromanagement or distrust in the private sector.

3. Your New Value Proposition

• Don't try to be the "do-everything" generalist.

• Instead, position yourself as the specialist of the "Seams"—the ambiguous zones between teams where dependencies break and processes fail. That is where the "mission-first" mindset is still a superpower.

Why Military Roles Work This Way: Rigidity on Paper, Fluidity in Execution

The military operates as what sociologists call a "total institution" (Goffman, Asylums, 1961). Boundaries between roles collapse because the institution absorbs every aspect of daily life. Your rank and rate are fixed. Your tasks are not.

This creates a specific pattern:

• Roles are rigid on paper, fluid in execution

• Identity is uniform-driven (rank, rate, billet)

• Mission overrides boundaries

• Everyone is multi-hatted by default

• Competence is measured at the group level

A Petty Officer First Class is simultaneously a department LPO, scheduler, disciplinarian, evaluator, technologist, direct care provider, informal counselor, and first-line decision-maker. The role doesn't change. The hat you're wearing does.

Then You Leave the Military, and the Logic Flips Completely

In private-sector tech, the structure reverses:

• Roles are fluid on paper, rigid in execution

• Identity is skills-driven (what you do, not where you sit)

• Ownership boundaries are explicit

• Multi-hatting requires justification

• Competence is measured at the individual level

In flat tech orgs, a product manager shouldn't be doing QA. A designer shouldn't make sprint tickets. A data analyst shouldn't run customer ops escalations. An IC shouldn't manage performance. When these lines blur without coordination, it's usually a sign of dysfunction (Bahat, HBR, 2018).

If you try to operate like you did in the military (jumping into gaps, solving problems before they land, crossing domains to keep the work moving), people may interpret it as stepping on someone's scope, creating rework, bypassing alignment, or not respecting ownership boundaries.

What was considered initiative in the military can look like overreach in tech.

To make this concrete, imagine a veteran sees a crowded customer support queue. In the Navy, the instinct is to jump in and start answering tickets to "stop the bleeding."

In a tech company, if a Product Manager jumps in to answer tickets, they might:

1. Mask the data showing the team is understaffed (hiding the real problem).

2. Give answers that aren't legally compliant because they skipped the latest training.

3. Undermine the Support Manager's authority.

In the military, the result of helping is "Mission Accomplished." In tech, the result of helping out of turn is often "System Data Corrupted."

The Core Structural Difference

Here's the contrast that matters:

Military	Tech
Roles fixed, tasks fluid	Roles fluid, tasks fixed
Mission supreme	Ownership supreme
Cross-boundary work = normal	Cross-boundary work = potential dysfunction
Identity = rank + role + mission	Identity = skill + scope + project
Competence = group performance	Competence = individual performance

This isn't a cultural difference. It's a design difference. The military runs as a total institution. Tech runs as a decentralized, skills-specialized mesh. These structures are incompatible at the root (Katz & Kahn, The Social Psychology of Organizations, 1978).

The Question Veterans Always Ask: "So Where Do We Fit?"

Here's the answer: We thrive at the seams.

Not by doing other people's jobs, but by recognizing what no one else sees. Unowned problems. Unspoken dependencies. Fragile processes. Blind spots. Ambiguous handoff zones. Ignored operational debt.

Organizational psychologists call this adaptive performance (Griffin et al., Academy of Management Journal, 2007). In the military, it's called being a good NCO. The mindset is still valuable. It just has to be mapped differently.

Instead of "do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission," the civilian equivalent is "operate within your domain, but take initiative at seams and blind spots."

Instead of wearing multiple hats simultaneously, you wear one hat but own the edge cases others ignore.

Instead of blurred tasks because mission overrides job descriptions, you maintain clear role boundaries but stay proactive about friction points.

What Civilians Should Understand

If you've never served, here's the translation. Veterans aren't simply "mission-oriented." We're conditioned to operate in systems where ambiguity belongs to everyone.

When we take initiative across boundaries, it's not rebellion or ego. It's how we kept units functioning when people were out, equipment failed, or priorities shifted without warning. We come from an environment where failing to act isn't just inefficient. It breaks the mission.

What Veterans Must Learn in Return

For veterans entering civilian life: You don’t need to suppress your instincts. You need to redirect them.

You don’t solve problems alone. You solve problems with the owner. You bring visibility instead of absorbing the issue silently. You lead at the edges instead of the center. You bring the same value, just translated into a scope-based environment.

Your strength isn’t doing everything. It’s recognizing what the team can’t see, won’t do, or can’t do—and closing those gaps without crossing ownership boundaries.

The Hardest Adjustment: Redefining Trust

This is where the transition gets uncomfortable. In the military, jumping into someone else’s lane to fix a problem is how you build trust—it signals, "I have your back." In a specialized tech organization, doing the exact same thing often erodes trust. It signals, "I don't trust you to handle your own scope."

Holding back will feel unnatural. It will feel like you are leaving a teammate behind or letting a standard slip. But in this new system, respecting the boundary is the act of support. It forces the organization to see the gap, rather than letting you invisibly patch it.

Closing Thought

In the military, roles are fixed but tasks are fluid. In tech, roles are fluid but tasks are fixed.

Once you understand that structural difference, the world stops feeling disorienting. Your strengths don't disappear. They relocate—from the center of the work to the seams where things tend to fall apart. That is where veterans shine, and where organizations quietly need them the most.

Reading List

Source	Why It Matters
I. Military as a "Total Institution" & Role Fluidity
Asylums Erving Goffman (1961)	Foundational work on "total institutions." Explains why roles blur and why personal/professional boundaries collapse in the military. Underpins the point that rank/rate stay fixed while tasks expand massively.
The Military: More Than Just a Job? Charles Moskos (1977)	Classic analysis of military organizational identity. Introduces the institutional vs. occupational model of military roles. Helps distinguish military purpose-driven structure from market-driven civilian ones.
"Moral Order, Organizational Rationality, and Military Adaptation" James Burk (Sociological Forum, 1993)	Shows how the military maintains adaptability despite rigid hierarchy. Supports the point that structure is rigid, but execution is fluid.
The Professional Soldier Morris Janowitz (1960)	Seminal work on why military roles blend symbolic, administrative, and functional duties. Explains the experience of wearing multiple hats simultaneously.
"Managing in a Time of Great Change" Peter Drucker (1995), ch. 10	Drucker argues the military is one of the most effective operational organizations because of role clarity + task adaptability. Validates the military-to-tech contrast at a management-theory level.
II. Organizational Structure & Role Boundaries (Civilian/Tech)
The Social Psychology of Organizations Daniel Katz & Robert Kahn (1978)	Canonical work on role expectations, boundary clarity, and organizational roles. Distinguishes role-set clarity (civilian world) from role absorption (total institutions). Directly supports the "roles fluid on paper but rigid in execution" argument.
"Why Do Flat Organizations Have So Many Managers?" Roy Bahat et al. (HBR, 2018)	Explains how flat tech organizations rely on clear ownership boundaries. Shows that cross-boundary work without alignment signals dysfunction. The tech-world analog to mission-driven flexibility in the military.
Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations Henry Mintzberg (1983)	Breaks down decentralized vs. centralized structures. Shows why tech equals specialization; military equals standardization plus direct supervision. Explains why tech roles require strict execution boundaries.
X-Teams: How to Build Teams that Lead, Innovate, and Succeed Ancona & Bresman (MIT Press, 2007)	Designed for cross-functional tech work. Emphasizes managing seams, external alignment, and fluid boundaries. Validates the point that veterans excel "at the seams."
III. Team Dynamics: Complementary Advantage & Situational Ownership
Leading Teams J. Richard Hackman (HBS Press, 2002)	The definitive work on complementary advantage. Shows that high-functioning teams depend on uneven distribution of strengths. Explains "task interdependence," which maps directly to military execution reality. Supports the "four categories of value" interpretation.
"A New Model of Adaptive Performance" Griffin, Neal, Parker (Academy of Management Journal, 2007)	Key empirical paper on how people take initiative under changing conditions. Defines proactivity, responsibility, problem anticipation, and role flexibility. Essentially the academic definition of the NCO instinct.
Managing the Unexpected Karl Weick (2001)	Introduces "high reliability organizations" (HROs). Military medical units are classic HROs. Shows why improvisation and structure co-exist. Explains the Okinawa experience: stable structure plus fluid tasking.
IV. Civil-Military Boundary Contrast
The Postmodern Military Charles C. Moskos & John Allen Williams (2000)	Examines how military roles diverge fundamentally from civilian labor roles. Strong support for the military-to-tech inversion argument.
"America's Military Population" Segal & Segal (Population Bulletin, 2004)	Provides context for why veterans experience civilian work as "fragmented." Excellent on structural and role expectations in military life.
V. Role Identity Theory and Why Veterans Feel Disoriented
"Which Hat to Wear?" Ashforth & Johnson (Organizational Identity Theory, 2001)	Explains identity switching and role conflict. Highly relevant for understanding why veterans feel over- or under-scoped in tech. Provides theoretical grounding for "role equals fixed" vs. "identity equals skill."
"Toward a Theory of Organizational Socialization" Van Maanen & Schein (1979)	Explores how deep institutional indoctrination creates enduring work habits. Supports the insight that the military creates a lifelong way of interpreting responsibility.
VI. Bonus: Works That Map the Emotional/Experiential Layer
Outline of a Theory of Practice Pierre Bourdieu (1977)	Concepts: habitus, field, capital. Perfect for interpreting the "embodied instinct" veterans bring into tech.
If I Die in a Combat Zone Tim O'Brien (1973)	Not organizational theory, but relevant for understanding soldierly adaptability.
In Extremis Leadership Thomas Kolditz (2007)	Focuses on leadership within conditions of uncertainty.