To address concerns that people attracted to military life are different from civilians even before they enlist—a distinct possibility—the authors also compare the management styles of CEOs whose veteran status differed solely based on random and modest differences in when they were born. For example, males that turned 18 at the height of the Korean War had a good chance of getting drafted into military service whether they liked it or not, relative to men that came of age just after the war. Since the slightly older group was forced into service, any differences in how CEOs from this cohort behaved relative to slightly younger ones can be attributed to the effect that the military had on them, not a pre-existing personality difference that made them enlist in the first place.