Rule 13

From Schwarzkopf’s Academy of Achievement interview (Las Vegas, June 26, 1992). He frames it as one of two rules in his own numbered system: “The secret to modern leadership is two rules. Rule 13: When placed in command, take charge.” The other half is “Rule 14: Do what’s right.”

The line reads as tautology until you ask why Schwarzkopf needed to make it a rule. His own answer names the failure mode: “There are a lot of other people out there who are willing to do the job, but they don’t want to get hung with the loss when it happens.” That is the leader Rule 13 corrects against, the one who occupies the formal command and does the visible work, but routes every consequential decision back upstairs so someone else gets hung with the loss. Rule 14 (“Do what’s right”) then keeps Rule 13 from collapsing into bravado: take charge, but of what is right.