Mark Esper

It's a core leadership, leadership attribute, which is accountability and responsibility.

You know, at West Point as a plebe, you were, you were allowed four, four answers to any question.

Yes, sir.

No, sir.

No excuse, sir.

Sir, may I ask a question?

Okay.

The third one, no excuse, meant that whatever you did, whether right or wrong, whether yours or not, it's your responsibility.

And you'll see that today at the highest levels of our military and in some degrees with civilians.

What it means is no matter what happens, you're the one in command.

You're responsible for it.

You may not have done it, but you have to fix it.

And that was my view as both Secretary of the Army and Secretary of Defense.

a defense when you're in an organization, it's a million people, even if 1% of people do something wrong because 99%, uh, if not higher of all our service members are every day trying to do the right thing and are doing the right thing, but 1% or half of 1%.

is a lot of people.

And so then the responsibility for the commander, because you are responsible, is you've got to take action and decide how you're going to deal with this, punish it, remove it, whatever the case may be.

But make sure you send the message to everybody else that these are the boundaries.

This is what we expect in terms of moral, ethical behavior, proper behavior.

and continue to lead your organization in that way.

So accountability and responsibility are very big things.