FORT SILL, Okla. -- Sharp, pointed remarks left Lee Baxter's mouth wading into an audience of Webster University students and guests July 30 inside Snow Hall.
His speech was part of Webster University's Centennial Anniversary, a year-long celebration from September 2014 to November 2015.
Baxter, a 31-year Army veteran and former commanding general of Fort Sill, knows a thing or two about transitioning out of the military and making his way into the world of business.
He is the president and owner of Signal Mountain Associates, Inc. a general and defense consulting firm. He is the owner of Medicine Park Management, managing partner at Mount Scott Management, and partner at Cobblestone Canyon, all real estate development companies. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Webster University.
Each anecdote or lesson he shared was at most a few sentences long, but its weight was presented in full.
"We learn to manage in the military and if you apply the same principles in the civilian sectors, you'll be successful, but you'll apply them in a little different way," he said.
While Soldiers are meant to give and take orders quickly and without little questioning for the sake of timeliness in war, business is ran at a different pace and with a different mentality.
"You change the way you're wired when you leave the military. You don't change the way you are, but you must change you're wiring. Your temper must be set aside. Emotion takes a backseat to patience, and you never take that step of burning a bridge that you may later have to cross."
He said any business can reach its end with mismanagement, even the military. He said the best way to avoid this is by hiring the right employees.
"Always hire the very best people. I can't think of a better secret to success. The best can do the work of three who are not the very best. Second-rate bosses normally want people working for them that are less qualified and less able than they are. Second-rate people often hire third-rate people. First-rate people are often not concerned whether the people that work around them are better than them or not.
"Be first rate."
He's been asked at least a hundred times how a farm boy from Minnesota moved up the ranks to become a general. He said despite his modest background and low C average in high school, his success came from hard work.
"It's the simplest thing in the world. I just out-worked everybody else. All of my peers. No secrets, no bottom line, I was the tiredest guy. I was the guy who worked harder, worked smarter, and made it happen."
He said nowadays when Soldiers are selected for promotion to brigadier general they go to a course called Capstone. At the end of the course they are briefed on the things that generally get higher ranking officers in trouble.
There used to only be three areas: money, meaning bad contracting practices; sex, unfaithfullness or a scandal attached to it; and alcoholism.
In more recent years the course has social media added to that list.
He offered up a saying to the Soldiers that essentially meant don't upset a newspaper reporter when they can give you bad press.
"You don't want to be showing up in the newspaper negatively because some guy doesn't like what you're doing. That's really an old time quote, it's not new, but it's changed because you don't have to upset the newspaper owner to get yourself in trouble in business or anywhere else.
"If you're a tradesman how many times do you have to show up with a negative review on Angie's List to go out of business? Not very often.
"How many times does something have to happen on Facebook to damage your reputation? Not very often.
"If you're a hotelier or in the housing business how many times do you have to get a bad review on Tripadvisor before nobody comes to your hotel anymore?"
He hammered home the point with:
"How many bad pictures of you have to appear on Instagram before you're in trouble?"
Baxter said the transition from the military to the civilian world is easy or hard depending on the person. He said planning and using the leadership skills that person learned in the military will help him or her adjust.
"Many of you have combat experience so courage is not foreign to you. You just have to figure out how it translates into another life."
He said finding a new passion and then figuring out how to turn that into a reality is the first step for anyone's business venture.
"You've got to figure out what you want before you can figure out how to do it. Accept the goal. Then, you've got to plot, to the best of your ability, the steps you know you need to take to get to that goal. Then, you create a timeline, which starts right now. Plot those steps, and then you've got to take that first step toward that goal.
"It may be education, it may be other kinds of learning, it may be investing, it may be networking but how you get to where you're going is not magic. It's very objective. If you do this right you can get what you want in the timeframe that you want it."
The next Webster University Centennial Anniversary event is Nov. 5. For more information about the university call 580-353-5766.
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