This training cannot be duplicated at most civilian universities or MBA programs. First and foremost, America s military academies teach their charges how to be a leader how to take command, execute orders, and make sure that they re carried out. You were never outside the environment in which leadership mattered. You can have a terrific idea, a great plan, and bad leadership, and you ll fail. You can have a bad plan and really good leadership, and still figure out how to make it successful.
Leadership is the single most important ingredient in all institutions.
If you have bad leaders, the rest doesn t matter. In battle, if you re leading a company up a hill, and that night you have to write letters to all the mothers whose sons got killed that day, for whatever reasons, you realize there is no excuse. If you re a CEO whose company is laying off thousands of workers because you failed to understand how the market changed, you also realize there is no excuse for those people now out of a job. Cadets and midshipmen are taught to persevere in the face of obstacles and impediments, important skills in business as well. When I deal with Academy people in the business world, and I am asking for something to be done, I know it s going to get done.