Mike Westman argues that human capital is the most consistently underpriced asset in business — and that developing it is a systems engineering discipline, not an HR function. He has spent 25 years proving both in the field.
A former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, Westman is co-owner and co-CEO of Shackleton Group, Inc. He and his partners backed into the work by accident. They set out to build aviation training systems for the Navy and Marine Corps, and on their first contract found a 250-person team that couldn’t see its own objective. They organized it, were asked to do the next one, and never got back to the original plan.
The result is Corporate Maneuver Warfare®, their trademarked framework for translating battlefield leadership doctrine into repeatable organizational practice — codified, checklist-driven, and built around a premise the firm states plainly: harness the collective power of your people. Shackleton hands clients the entire methodology and teaches them to run it alone. Close to 90% of revenue still comes from returning clients, and more than 95% of new work arrives by referral.
His clients range from defense acquisition programs to banks, hospitals, manufacturers, and police departments, where the economic question is always the same — what institutional knowledge costs to build, and what it costs when it walks out the door. He is co-author of the forthcoming Suits, Guitars & 3D Glasses: A Practical Guide to Corporate Maneuver Warfare.
