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The Military and the MBA: Chris Howard (MBA 2003)
Chris Howard (MBA 2003) served in the Air Force in Afghanistan, for which he was awarded a Bronze Star; he retired from the reserve in 2013 as a lieutenant colonel. He is now the president of Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia.
As a freshman at the Air Force Academy, if you are asked a question you have five responses. It’s “Yes, sir. No, sir. No excuse, sir. Sir, I will find out. Sir, I do not understand.” That’s it. Those are your five basic responses for a year. What that impresses upon you is a sense of responsibility and accountability. You learn that you’ve got to own your actions, you’ve got to own your words, you’ve got to take responsibility for what you do and for what you don’t do. That’s the first lesson.
Lesson number two: In your squadron you are part of a team, and you are less important than your subordinates. You are less important than the mission. You are less important than the team. The honor to lead is the honor of eating last, the honor of making sure your troops, your airmen, your sailors, your Marines are taken care of first.
When I decided to transition out of the military, I took those lessons with me to Bristol-Myers Squibb and then to HBS.
We were in class when 9/11 happened. I was a reservist. A few weeks later I got a call saying I was being returned to active duty, and then my activation was delayed until graduation. I finished my last exam, and the next day I reported to the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. Within a few weeks I was in Afghanistan.
I was the senior human intelligence officer on the military side for overt collection. I had a team of 15 in civilian clothes. And it becomes a case study, right?
“Major Chris Howard lay on his cot having been in the country for 12 hours as the mortars came in, trying to figure out how he was going to take this unit and find the bad guys…” When I came back from Afghanistan, I told Professor Jim Cash that the Harvard Business School case study methodology is useful even when you’re getting shot at.
Next: Gene Markowski (MBA 1973) — Unlearning some of the lessons of the military »
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