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The Military and the MBA: Gene Markowski (MBA 1973)
Gene Markowski (MBA 1973) served as an Army Huey helicopter pilot in Vietnam and received the Distinguished Flying Cross and many other honors for heroic action. He retired from a career in financial services in 2013.
I was stationed in a tank unit out in Colorado Springs when the Vietnam War started up. I didn’t think I wanted to be in a tank in Vietnam, so I volunteered to go to flight school. Six months later, I was in combat. I was a 24-year-old captain supervising other pilots, motivating people who—this is when the draft was on—were not always willing to participate. You grow up in a hurry. After having been in combat, everything else seems to be a vacation.
When I came to HBS, I had been at West Point for 4 years and in the military for 7 years. That was 11 years where I was focused entirely on military principles, on military leadership and organization. I didn’t have any background in accounting, marketing, and those kinds of topics, and I was sitting in a class with people who caused my brain to expand sideways. All of a sudden I was exposed to things I had never thought about before.
When you enter the business world, you have to unlearn some of the things you learned in the military. You can’t just give orders in business. And the military teaches you to conform. They don’t want you to innovate—though they do want you to improvise. In business today, though, it’s all innovation and disruption. But I think it’s a two-way street. There are military concepts—like the focus on structure and ethics—that are useful in the business world, too.
I often have business people tell me stories about how they spent their two years as a Marine or their two years in the Navy. My son went to West Point as well and spent some time in the military, then went to business school. The melding of the two experiences is important.
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The Military and the MBA
Re: Maura Sullivan (MBA 2009); Chris Howard (MBA 2003); Gene Markowski (MBA 1973); Lance Batchelor (MBA 1993); Rich Kondo (MBA 1999); Maura Sullivan (MBA 2009); Chris Howard (MBA 2003); Rich Kondo (MBA 1999); Everett Spain (DBA 2014); James I. Cash (James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus)