The Campaign for Sustained Leadership

MBAs Get Their Feet Wet, Literally, at Boot Camp Training Program

It's nearly nightfall when two buses packed with 80 Wharton MBA candidates and 10 Wharton undergraduates arrive at the Marine Officer Candidate training ground in Quantico, Virginia. The students, chatty and animated during their trek south from Philadelphia, now whisper in nervous anticipation.

A barrel-chested Marine sergeant boards the bus and stands facing them in the aisle. "You are in my world now," he barks. "You will do as I say and you will do it quickly and you will do it without question. Is that clear?" "YES." "You are to refer to me as sir, is that clear?" "YES SIR." "I can't hear you." "YES SIR!"

The outline of several other drill sergeants, four men and one woman, appear on the lawn beside the bus. Beside them are two neat piles of 90 canteens on belts and 90 helmets. The candidates stumble off both buses, women in one group and men in another. They form up in ranks and columns, dress left and right, and tighten up.

What's behind this odd pairing of Wharton students and the Marines? A 24- hour crash course in boot camp survival that's actually a high-level leadership venture organized by the Wharton Veterans Club and management professor Michael Useem, director of Wharton's Center for Leadership and Change Management. Atypical as is seems, Useem believes a combination of forced teamwork, toughness, and extreme physical and mental challenges is just what potential business leaders need to succeed in today's fast-changing global market.

"With the rise of the Internet, intensifying competition, and globalizing equity markets, students will need to know how to act fast without necessarily having all the information in front of them," says Useem, who developed the program with Wharton graduate students Vince Martino and Jason Santamaria, veterans of the Marine Corps, Pat Henahan, an Army veteran, and Steve Medland, a Navy veteran. A $25,000 sponsorship from Lehman Brothers, Useem says, helped make the program possible.

This Wild West approach to teaching leadership is nothing new for Useem: the Harvard PhD has made headlines for his annual Mount Everest Leadership Trek, a 16-day high-altitude trek he leads for Wharton MBA graduates, participants in Wharton Executive Education Programs and managers with company sponsors in the Leadership Center.

Such intense, rigorous programs, Useem explains, are unparalleled in their ability to teach something he calls the "need for speed" – perhaps the most dramatic change facing business leaders today. "It's great to be analytical, but you can't be analytical too long. You have to face up to your challenges and then act. Working fast and focused and being able to gather all the facts are what's needed from a leader in a rapidly changing and demanding situation, and our leadership ventures are intended to build those capacities."

And who better to teach fast and focused leadership than the military, says Steve Medland, a retired Navy nuclear submarine officer. "The military teaches loyalty upwards and downwards and that brings with it an interdependence. You have to rely on those you are leading to make the right decisions and to disagree with you if they feel they have to. You have to be able to explain why you should take an initiative and have faith in the knowledge that you've trained your team well."