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The Military and the MBA: Lance Batchelor (MBA 1993)
Lance Batchelor (MBA 1993) served in the British Royal Navy for eight years, retiring as a lieutenant. The former CEO of Domino’s Pizza and Tesco Mobile, he now leads Saga, which offers products and services to consumers over 50 in the United Kingdom.
The first three to six months, almost everybody who arrives at HBS is convinced that the admissions office must have made a mistake, that they’re going to get caught out. If you come from Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, maybe you have a little bit more self-belief and confidence as you go in the door. But if you come out of a submarine, the way I did, it takes a good few months before you start to believe that you deserve your place in the classroom. Then came the case “Gunfire at Sea.” I finally thought, “Hang on a minute, I can do that.” I talked for 10 minutes with the benefit of real, personal experience about what it feels like to be on a ship at sea, operating a complex weapons system.
The ex-military guys and girls brought something interesting and unique to the classroom and the study groups. We were used to creating teams. We were used to dealing with very tight deadlines. We were used to staying up all night to get the task completed. We were used to drawing on the collective talents of people with different backgrounds and melding all those skills together to get to a satisfactory output. And maybe above all, we were used to operating under intense pressure without letting the pressure get to us.
When you sail in a submarine for a three-month patrol in the Cold War, you have two ways to treat your crew. You can treat them as pawns on a chessboard and tell them what to do day in, day out; or you can treat them as fellow adventurers on a journey together. You can try to get them really fired up about what you’re trying to do and why you’re trying to do it. And the advantage of that is if they find themselves making tough decisions on their own without the ability to refer upward, they will probably make good decisions.
The Navy showed me the importance of that. And I have tried to do that in my civilian roles ever since, whether it was as a brand manager of Oil of Olay or the CEO of a multibillion-dollar business.
Next: Richard Kondo (MBA 1999) — Blending military leadership and private industry best practices »
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