Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lessons From Military History 2024071

CSPAN3 Lessons From Military History July 13, 2024

Recently traveled to indianapolis to learn about the rich history. To watch more history from indianapolis and other stops on our tour, visit cspan. Org cities tour. You are watching American History tv all weekend every weekend on cspan3. Peter talks about lessons from history that shaped temp during his Vietnam War Service and later as a businessman and leader. He is the former president , ceo and board vice chair of Marvel Entertainment. Part of anation was annual conference and washington, d. C. I am going to take the opportunity to introduce to you the founder and president of the wealth and values initiative. [applause] good morning, everyone. I want to start off by thanking the American Veteran center for this spectacular series of events. Servicetheir wonderful to our country. I also am so impressed with the quality of the young people here today. These young, high potential military leaders inspire confidence in me as a father of four with three grandkids in terms of the future of my kids and grandkids in this country. I also am very appreciative of a special group of the initiative that are here today. Having come from across the country. Seen theno doubt formal side of peter kunio cuneo in your program. As a leading turnaround expert, if you go to forbes. Com they say he is top 10 up there was steve jobs and others. Turnaround wase Marvel Entertainment which he took out of bankruptcy and sold forisney nine years later 4. 5 billion. Is anyone a fan of marble . Marvel . Every hand. I want to share something on the personal side having had the pleasure and honor of working with peter as a partner and as a friend for over seven years. Peter is a patriot. Having served on the u. S. A as ass vietnam conflict Surface Warfare officer. , fleet duty officer officer of the deck, and here intercept controller. After which, he pivoted and completed Harvard Business froml and having emerged Harvard Business school, ultimately became chairman of the board of Alfred University and received an honorary degree. Service to the country, business leadership,academic he is also a patriarch. He has been married for 49 years to his lovely bride with whom i have had the opportunity to work. Peter founded a Family Office after exiting marble. Marvel. That is the work of the wealth and values initiative. Were doing a lot philanthropic late for veterans which is 50 thehe foundation as well as aria area we called sports for good. Our mission is to inspire wealth and power to do just that. Pivot toward giveback. Dimensions, hard to imagine one person has done them. Peter has done it wonderfully and the most important take away, he walks the talk. Without further ado, my friend and partner peter cuneo. [applause] peter thank you all very much. I saw the hands go up for marvel. Now i have to change my entire presentation. Feeling we want to talk more about that than anything else. [laughter] i will talk a little bit about myt and i have changed presentation although not so much for the hands this morning. But because i have been very inspired the last couple of days sitting in on almost all the sessions. There were that certain themes that came out of the sessions that i think i can help reinforce. Every speaker as you might imagine, i have been doing these kinds of things for 20 years. To leave something behind. Something that the audience will remember. No matter what. Can do that, you have been very successful. I will try to do that with all of you today. Notk of this presentation as a Group Presentation but simply as a fireside chat. I want to speak to each of you individually. Spiritually if not an actual practice. Here andlled to be again, i am always tremendously turned on when i can speak to those younger than me. We get to a certain age where we older people get a lot of our energy from younger people. Seeing the bright light in our future which includes all of you in the room today. Assigned was i was to talk about some of the leadership lessons i learned in the military. That i subsequently used in civilian life. Im going to do that today. Marvel in some cases for things that i used in the military. I am wearing two pins today. Lapel is ofy left the National Archives. I have been on the board of the foundation for eight years. We are having this meeting here today by pure coincidence. I sat in your seats for a long time and i have seen scores of people here at the podium presenting. For me, it is fun to do a reversal and bfp or. Is in somel archives ways americas bestkept secret. The National Archives keeps the records of all departments of the government from the beginning. We have 16 billion documents. 6 billion on digital. We have 10 billion documents that are not digital. We have the largest collection of antique maps. The largest collection of film. I think it is 48 million photographs in the archives. We talked earlier today i think about the importance of education and learning history. Always loved history growing up. Its one of the reasons why i went into the military. It is also the reason i am on the board of the archives. I love history, i do believe that past is prologue. By studying history, we can increase our wisdom. She miniature being what it is, it tends to repeat itself. The trappings and situations may be different but it will be very important weather you are a junior officer, or a star rank, reading people is very important. Successfully,at in civilian life, as well. Archives is americas bestkept secret. You are sitting a couple floors down underneath the declaration of independence, the constitution, the bill of rights and a copy of the magna carta. Said, please get up there and take a look while they an here because it is truly amazing experience to see those documents. Oversees allalso 14 president ial libraries. For someone like me who loves history, this is a gold mine, if you will. Me and sacred place for it should be for all americans. The archives are open to all americans, with the exception of some confidential documents, obviously. All americans can come here and take advantage. Is a pin frompel the archives. We raise money to do special exhibits that will be here. The exhibit that is there presently is the exhibit on the 19th amendment, the 100th anniversary of women getting to vote. If you are going to be here, i think you would learn a lot about the plight of women historically in our country. You thatecommend to you try to get through that exhibit, male or female. I think you would learn a great deal. Ago, we did the 50th anniversary of the vietnam war, of which i am a veteran. I thought i would wear thispin for that year but frankly i wear it all the time and i dont think i will ever take it off. This all ties together under this rooftop. I think it is super moving for me to be here today. I want to talk a little bit i go my service, why did in the navy in the first place . A navy family. My father was a navy officer in the south pacific. In the korean war, he was on the uss valley forge. My father loved the navy. He wanted to stay in, even though he was way past the age when vietnam came, he wrote a letter to the navy to try to get them to call him back up, even though he was retired. That was typical of my father. Has the records of 100 million americans that have served in the military from world war i forward. In this building, we have the military records of all the americans that served from the revolutionary war to just prior to world war i. Records fromhers st. Louis and i learned a great deal about my father i never knew. My father had a difficult time with ptsd and he died young because of it. To a certain degree as a young kid, i could never understand why he was so unhappy. He was a member of the Fire Department as well. 96, he is one of my heroes. Largest naval engagement in history. I am going to talk about one aspect of that in a little bit. Navyso served in the during the korean war. Growing up, this was part of my life. I loved history. I read a lot of military history. It, i watched a lot of the old films, i thought i was john wayne to a certain degree in these films. I might mention a few of them to you. You might actually want to have the same experience i have had. Maybe one for each service. In the air force, i think what really inspired me was a film that i would consider to be and i am in the film business perhaps the greatest movie on film leadership ever made. It was made in 1948 and was animated nominated for an academy award. It,ou are wondering about it is a film called 12 00 high starring gregory peck. Anyone sitting here involved , it is ther force true story of the americans taking on daylight bombing in world war ii over europe flying out of england. It is a turnaround story. I made my career doing turnarounds. Marvel is just one of seven i completed. Taking on difficult assignments when things were chaotic financially, culturally. This is a turnaround film. It particular squadron is not doing well. By his peck is asked commander to take over the squadron. I really recommend it to you. Blackandwhite, how good could it be . It is classic. Peck. High, gregory i am requesting you all try to see the film. I use it in my presentations about leadership and i will use it to start things off. Corps, you might say i am going to talk about iwo jima. It is considered the marine corpss finest hour. We have a wonderful memorial here in washington. I have a slightly different opinion. For me and all my readings, the marine corpss greatest moment might be the reservoir in north korea. For those of you thinking about the marine corps, you must read the story. It is the korean war, we have driven the North Koreans back basically to the chinese border. The chinese decide it is winter they decide to enter the war and they send millions of soldiers against us in the north. The marines are occupying the area around the reservoir. It is minus 30 degrees. Waves of chinese come at the marines, it is 10 to one. Maybe the reasons people dont associate this as a great moment is because this initiated a strategic withdrawal by the marines. They had to fight their way out from being surrounded 10 to one in mind this 30 degrees. I believe this might be the battle in which the marines earned more medals of honor than any other battle in their history. I am not sure of that but there is certainly a lot of them and they did not leave anyone behind. There are a lot of good books about this part good books about this. For the army, it is of course normandy. I made my first visit to normandy three weeks ago. It was the 75th anniversary of normandy and i was very moved. Buriedre 9900 americans in a cemetery. Must visit the beach if you can call it the inch, where the rangers came againstcally climbed up the germans, literally on top of them. The beachd not defend with med infantry because they considered it basically impregnable. Nobody could make it up. But the rangers did. The rangers made it in and they fought their way in for about one mile and took positions. Counterattacked, the rangers held for two days. They had no food and very little ammunition. When they were finally relieved, out of 220 rangers, there were only 100. Amazing moment. I recommend normandy to everyone, if i sound a little emotional, i am. I think for the navy, this is one of the reasons i chose to be in destroyers, i was lucky i had grades that worked well enough and i picked destroyers in the pacific for my assignment. One reason was a particular battle. For the midshipmen who are here, go look it up. It is the essence of what a Surface Warfare officer is. They take off, without getting into too much detail, a situation occurred in which a japanese fleet, that included the greatest battleship ever built, was undetected coming against the beaches where it landed from the north. Only guarding the beaches basically at that point were for destroyers and destroyer escorts and a bunch of jeep carriers and basically the japanese fleet attacked, basically undetected. The battleen called of the small boys. The commander of that task force ordered these for destroyers to theyght at the japanese, were about 12 miles away. The guns had ranges well over 12 miles. For destroyers and destroyer escorts went right at the japanese, firing their five inch guns, which had little impact and launching torpedoes. Sunk, they all do they were going to die. One was heavily damaged and survive. Carrierss from the also attacked. No armament or ammunition in some cases, they just flew to provide the cents there were more attacking than the war. Amazingly, the japanese fleet retreated. I remember that story of the destroyers going basically at flank speed toward the enemy, knowing they would not survive. Came, theretnam war was no question i would go in. I did officer candidate school and in fourmonth i was an officer. We got reserve commissions. From theerent graduates of annapolis the got regular commissions. My term of service was going to be three years. I did that on the uss joseph strauss. Is rare to be on the same ship for three years what i was. I was an assistant, and that ,fficer, officer of the deck etc. The thing i remember the most was the tremendous amount of responsibility that young officers got in the military at the time. I think it is still true today. All of you will get great responsibilities for your age. Properly, yout can bring great credit to yourself and to your accomplishments. Very, very important. We are lacking in Leadership Today in this country, i think we all know that. I have the opinion that there are less successful good leaders in our country than ever in our history. I base that on my readings of history in my own personal experience. Can work this. I would ask you, i should ask you before i put this up, to find what you think successful leadership is. I think it is very simple. This is my definition. I mentioned positive goals. Whoe are a lot of leaders were leaders but not successful. In a way, this is very simplistic. It tells a story. Years, i have been doing talks around the world. Sometimes they take four hours, sometimes i talk for one hour and then there are three hours of q a because the subject of leadership is so interesting to people. I little bit of history, this started almost 20 years ago when i was ceo of marvel. A speech onto give leadership to Harvard Business school, my alma mater. I had a long flight to hong kong. We do a lot of business with products in china. I thought, what am i going to say about leadership . Something happen. It was nine hours straight, i could not stop. I was thinking my whole life through, totally quiet. 28 essentialh items for successful leadership. Today, it is 32. In the past 20 years, i have added four. A couple things i think are worth mentioning. I think these are useful to anybody. I dont care if youre in the military, in business, you can be a nonprofit, you can beheading a civic organization, you can be the president of a pta in your town. You can beheading up the sunday school in your church. All of these are fundamental and they work for everybody. I dont care what your background is, what your age is, wether you have money or not, what your Sexual Orientation is, what your color is, what your gender is, it does not better. I think these are universal principles. Many of these have come from my mistakes. I remember every detail of my mistakes. I remember very little about my successes. It is true. The great things about great leaders is they always learn from their mistakes. Always very honest about what works and what does that work and they are always trying to improve. This is not a complete list. It is my list. If you are tasked to doing your own list, it might be different. Pretend this is the end all. These are written not from 40,000 feet, but from right on the ground. Can get talks, read books by consultants, go to classes in school and talk about leadership from 40,000 feet. Have vision and be a terrible leader, by the way. That is just one example. I wrote these for somebody who will have to lead people every day. Every day, and motivate them, accordingly. Think im not going to show the whole list in the interest of time. American Veterans Center has the list and it will provide it. It is two pages, one or two sentences each. I use this to grade myself on a regular basis. Even after all these years. I have given these to people 10 years ago and they call me up in city still use the list. If you are going to use the list, you have to be honest with yourself. You dont have to share it with anyone else. Think about the things on the list you are good at, think about the things you are not good at and try to improve them. What i am going to do now is select a couple of these and take you through them and talk about some experiences i had in the navy and in civilian life and leadership. The first part of what i do in these essentials is what i consider fundamentals. What i mean by fundamentals is actually very simply, things we all know are true. You will look at these first group of fundamentals and probably say, i know that. I get that. In my experience, not many people actually practice them. That is why they are here. Number twoalk about for a minute. It is not coming up correctly, for some reason. Ok. Good. Simply tell people what you really think. Just talking about simply being honest. Admit your mistakes. A brandnew on the strauss. We are on a mission called plain guarding. At that time, it might be different today because it was 50 years ago. When aircraft carriers launched or recovered aircraft, they wanted a destroyer one nautical mile in front and another one one nautical mile in trail simply because if someone went hopefully wereou able to pick up the pilots. In the navy at time, the worst time for aircraft with the carriers was actually landing. That was true and it was littleknown that navy pilots flying against the north had a 50 chance of being hit during a tour, which was typically six months. Planes getting back over the water and wanted to get back on the carrier. The role of the destroyers was important. The navy launched and recovered aircraft at night. You could not tell the difference. We flew a lot of night missions. It is the watch from midnight until 4 00 in the morning and i am a junior officer and the , all i says to me, cuneo want you to do is stand here and observe, you dont have to do anything. Line in be on the gun the war zone for 30 days at a time and then take three or four days of our end are. The captain was on the ship the entire time, except we get to take care of certain things. He slept in his chair. There was action all of the time. The captain would typicall

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