Leadership is about working with people

Clark was asked how his military career prepared him, if at all, for a more domestic, political position.

"WHEN YOU'RE in the military, a lot of people think that it's about giving orders, but mostly it isn't. You start as a company commander, and you go to your first unit, you realize, even though you're the guy that signed the property book and you're responsible for the company, 100 people, $10 million worth of equipment, you go to the first sergeant your first day and say, `Top, what do you think we ought to be doing today?' I mean, it starts at that level, because you recognize that leadership is not about giving orders, it's about working with others, bringing out the best in the people who are working with you, developing their confidence, relying on their expertise, developing your own proficiency, technically . . . "It's as much of a family as you can make it. You know, you don't get anybody to come into the armed forces unless they want to be there. And they won't stay unless you persuade them that they want to stay. Sixty percent of the armed forces are married. And so if the wife doesn't want to stay, the soldier won't stay. So you're in the business of selling your organization to your own people. There's a lot of internal marketing, to put it in a business term, that has to be done. Unlike American corporations, where I've been on the boards of numerous of these corporations, and there's not pricing power for labor in today's market. But there is a pricing power, the analog of that, in the armed forces. Because when a person's enlistment period is up, they can leave. And they will if they don't like it.

"So the things I worried about were things like schooling, healthcare, housing -- cost of housing, quality of housing -- a time off for the soldiers to be with their families. We did things that would be unheard of in the American business community. For example, when I was a Division Commander at Fort Hood, Texas, I had 17 elementary, junior high, and two high schools I was responsible for. And when a student had a teacher's appointment, I gave the order that my soldiers would miss their duty to be with their child to go to that teacher's appointment."