Courage to Execute: What elite U.S. military units can teach business about leadership and team performance

Chapter 2

Basic Training: Indoctrinating Your People with Values and Skills

Amidst the smoke and flak that covered Omaha Beach on D-Day, 1944, the U.S. Army's 5th Ranger Battalion came ashore and assembled along the beachhead. In the swirl of combat, General Norman Cota came up to a group of them as he tried to move American troops inland.

“What unit are you with?” he screamed over the shells and gunfire.

“Fifth Rangers,” one replied.

“Well then,” the general said. “Rangers lead the way!”

And so they did, as they have ever since. When soldiers were needed to scale the rocky cliffs of Point du Hoc near Utah Beach to disable German guns, the Rangers answered the call. And, on Omaha, in the darkest hour of the invasion, the Army's two-year-old special forces group helped lead the breakout from that deathtrap of a beach to the high ground. From D-Day forward, their battle cry has been the same: “Rangers lead the way.”

Today, the Rangers are among the most respected special operations forces in the world. They've carried their combat toughness and their rallying cry into every U.S. conflict since World War II. And despite the passing years since those days on Omaha Beach, every successive generation of Rangers has had one thing in common. Every soldier who wears the arched yellow and black Ranger tab on his uniform started his journey at Fort Benning, Georgia, at the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RAS), or its forerunner, the Ranger Indoctrination Program. Roughly 350 to 400 ...