Most leadership training assumes a manager can direct the people who report to them. Justin Fulcher says government taught him a harder version of the skill: how to lead when you have no formal power over the people whose cooperation you need.

Fulcher served six months as a senior staffer at the Defense Department under Secretary Hegseth. The secretary’s mandate covered rebuilding military readiness, reorienting procurement culture, and modernizing the tools service members depend on. Hegseth set a clear direction. The day-to-day work, Fulcher has explained, was turning that direction into operational change inside institutions never built to move quickly.

Earning Influence

Defense organizations come with their own inertia and their own relationships with outside oversight. Inside that structure, Fulcher’s effectiveness depended on credibility, earned through demonstrated knowledge of how the institution actually functioned. Positional authority was not the lever.

“Your credibility is the only lever you actually control,” Fulcher has said. “The institution has absorbed reformers before. It knows the difference between someone who is genuinely trying to understand how things work and someone who has already decided.”

Justin Fulcher argues that this kind of leadership, grounded in relationships and operational understanding, is the kind that scales. He also notes that private-sector training rarely touches it, since corporate authority tends to match accountability in ways government seldom allows.

Where Founders Stumble

According to Fulcher, the founders who struggle most in public service often arrive expecting clear vision and fast execution to win the day. Federal agencies run on something else: process, precedent, and the need to protect decisions against the full range of institutional and political review. Instincts that serve a startup well can work against a newcomer there.

The lesson for entrepreneurs is patience paired with curiosity. Federal institutions have watched outside reformers come and go, and they respond to people who show they want to learn the system before trying to change it. Justin Fulcher, who has since moved on to defense technology and national security work, has made earned credibility a central part of his case for public service. Visit this page on LinkedIn, for more information.

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