(FORTUNE Magazine) – The moment you arrive at a Leading Concepts Boot Camp, you know you're screwed. You know it when the only sign of civilization you see at the campsite you will call home for the next four days is a row of Porta-Johns. You know it when a cloud of mosquitoes starts gnawing on your flesh as though they like the insect repellent you've sprayed all over your body. And you know it as soon as Dean Hohl and Shane Dozier, the former Army Rangers who own Louisville-based Leading Concepts (LC), start barking orders at you.

Their boot camp may not be as tough as the real military, but compared with most corporate outings, it's off the charts: When I went through the program with 18 Domino's Pizza managers earlier this summer, our days began at the crack of dawn and ended around 2 A.M. We spent much of the intervening time running through the woods and hurling ourselves on the ground to avoid being hit by paint balls, which hurt like hell. We wore Army fatigues and combat boots and ate Army rations, which have a shelf life of five years.

Aren't you glad you weren't there? And yet there's a reason LC clients such as Domino's and Honeywell pony up $2,300 for each employee they subject to all this. After all, scores of CEOs, ranging from Citicorp's John Reed to NationsBank's Hugh McColl, attribute much of their success in the business world to lessons they learned in the armed forces. A few days in a simulated boot camp, the reasoning goes, might help civilians pick up some of the same teamwork, leadership, and communication skills--TLC in LC lingo--that are routinely engendered by military service.

When I showed up for boot camp in the woodlands of Michigan, I was assigned to the same platoon as all of the Domino's managers. Our enemy: a shadowy entity known as the MODD, which stands for anything that "makes our day difficult." Since the MODD is a highly experienced crew of LC employees who take sadistic pleasure in shooting out-of-shape corporate drones, the only way we could survive was by developing superior TLC.

But can a few days playing war games with paint-ball rifles really make you a better team leader? I gave it a try so that you might not have to. Here's what happened after the first day of orientation.

DAY 1: We get blown to bits. Number of new bug bites: nine Today's culinary highlight: Four bright-pink hot dogs that look as if they've never touched a flame.

In five minutes our platoon is heading to the MODD camp on our first reconnaissance mission, and everyone is spraying defogger on his or her safety goggles. Right before we leave, Hohl throws us a curve ball by reassigning all the major positions in the group to different people. I'm the new platoon leader.

We're completely unprepared for our new jobs. For one thing, our new navigator doesn't know how to use a compass, and within minutes we're lost in the woods. By the time we get reoriented, we're hopelessly behind schedule. Instead of scrapping the mission altogether so that we can get back to base camp on time, I decide to have my troops press on. Before long we've pinpointed the enemy camp's location, and I'm thinking I've made a pretty good decision.

Wrong. As we march back home, our radio crackles with the bad news: All the troops that we left behind to guard our base camp have been wiped out by the MODD squad. If only we had returned home when we were supposed to, perhaps we could have helped our teammates ward off the attack.

Later that night, as we talk about what went wrong, I take some heat for ignoring our deadline. "This mission was like a hundred-pie hour where we had 60 lates," says Cyndi Gagliardi, who manages a Domino's in Woodland Hills, Calif. Not a surprising reaction given the fact that until some of its drivers got into trouble for speeding, Domino's gave you your pizza for free if it didn't have your order to you in 30 minutes or less. The guarantee may be gone, but the time pressure these store managers work under isn't.

From now on we're going to have to make sure all of our soldiers are prepared to step into a new role at a moment's notice. It's a lesson easily carried over from the platoon to the pizza store, and most of the Domino's managers dutifully promise to cross-train their employees as soon as they return to work. The response is perfectly logical--and almost too pat. Whether they'll keep these promises when they get back to their stores is another matter.

DAY 2: Cussing works. Number of new bug bites: four Today's culinary highlight: Pork chow mein. (Think of what it would be like to eat a boil-in-the-bag meal straight out of the package, and you get the idea.)

The big raid. We're running toward the MODD camp at full speed, showering it with pink paint as we scream an ancient and obscene insult that starts with the letter "f" and ends with the word "you" at the top of our lungs. Hohl encourages cussing, as he calls it, at crucial moments like this--it shows the enemy you mean business. "We won't tell your mother," he says.

Evidently, cussing works. We completely surround the camp while our new platoon leader pillages the MODD's supplies, which include tonight's dinner, a sack of Twizzlers, and a bottle of iced tea. Compared with our other missions, the raid seems almost too easy--until we return home, where the enemy is waiting for us with a six-wheel all-terrain vehicle. By the time they retreat, our camp looks as if it's been invaded by Jackson Pollock.

The reprieve is only temporary. In the dead of night, the earth-shattering snores of my tent-mate Ronald are punctuated by the thwack of paint balls against the tightly stretched olive-green canvas that's sheltering us. Through the vent in our roof I see the sky being lit up by a red flare.

Even though we've gone to sleep in our camouflage, we're slow to stumble out of our tents and face another MODD onslaught. There are 19 of us and only two of them, but for a long time it seems the other way around. And truth be told, when the MODD finally does back off, it looks as though they're going easy on us.

They must have sensed that we were near our breaking point. Around the campfire earlier that night, the group was deeply divided about our raid: While some people called it a big success, others thought we just got lucky, given our poor execution. "I'm pissed," says Dennis Schlemmer, who manages a Domino's in Brighton, Mich. "We had a plan set, and we just totally ignored it."

Hey, when you spend 24 hours a day eating, sleeping, and not showering with each other in the woods, the polite facade has to get stripped away at some point. Hohl had warned us about the phases--forming, storming, norming, and performing--a typical group goes through. The only problem is, we've got less than 24 hours to get to the norming and performing parts.

DAY 3: Armageddon Number of new bug bites: seven Today's culinary highlight: A chocolate-covered brownie. (At least that's what the package says. I'm crushed when this turns out to be a cracker coated with some sticky brown stuff.)

Our final raid on the MODD camp gets off to a disastrous start. The enemy is waiting for us in the woods, barely a quarter of a mile from our base camp. From that point on we have to fight tooth and nail just to take ten paces in the right direction. Then our comrades radio us with an urgent message: Come back now.

They weren't crying wolf. Base camp is dotted with puddles of paint left behind by grenades the MODD has, but we don't. Lots of our soldiers are huddled behind makeshift bunkers. Others are running through the smoke-filled air--yes, now the MODD is using smoke bombs--with the dazed look of people who have been averaging three hours' sleep per night.

Even though we're dog tired, we hunker down and start picking off members of the MODD squad one by one. Before long, there's only one enemy left, a woman who is small and quick and stubborn as hell. We fire what seem like a hundred paint balls in her direction before one splatters against her left arm.

It's over. Everyone is either screaming with joy or firing rifles at the clouds in celebration. True, we didn't destroy the MODD. But they didn't destroy us.

During our final postmortem, most of the comments are decidedly upbeat. "Our first mission was one of the worst experiences of my life," says Kirsten Glodava, a Domino's manager from Arvada, Colo. "But after that it got a lot better. I can't believe how much we've learned." For the most part these good vibes seem genuine. Then again, the fact that this ordeal has finally ended doesn't hurt.

After everyone has had a few weeks to readjust to civilian life, I check in with some of my fellow survivors to see whether boot camp is just a story they can dine out on or whether it has actually changed the way they work.

I'm hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't give the experience a thumbs up. "From a business standpoint, I'd say I learned as much as I did during my first couple of years in the military," says Chris Crowe, who spent six years in the Marine Corps before becoming the manager of a Domino's in Lacey, Wash. But did the program give anyone specific new abilities? No one can really name any, and that isn't what the experience is designed for. "A program like this doesn't teach you many hands-on skills," says Lt. Col. Joe LeBoeuf, who teaches in the department of behavioral science and leadership at West Point. "What it really does is show you that you can do more than you think. When you see how you perform when you're tired and hungry, that teaches you something about yourself."

Even though the benefits of boot camp aren't immediately obvious, many people's belief in it is undiminished, and not just among the Domino's group I joined. For example, Jim Goodman, president of DJ/Nypro, a custom injection-molding company based in Louisville, has sent about 15% of his 900 employees to the LC boot camp. "We've seen major changes in the ways they approach problems," he says. "They listen more. They're more patient. They're more willing to be judged as being part of a team instead of as individuals."

What's more, when I talk to my fellow classmates, almost all agree that boot camp has made them better communicators. Hohl, our instructor, isn't surprised. "In the military, if you're not understood, well, that's when people get killed," he says. "During a boot camp, I see people go from assuming that they're understood to assuming that they're not understood, and taking the time to make sure everyone really hears them."

And yes, some of these managers are even cross-training their employees, just as they promised they would at the end of our first day. "I'm pushing people to learn other parts of the store," says Schlemmer, the Brighton, Mich., Domino's manager. "Now if we're getting killed, when the drivers come back from a run they can help out topping pizzas, and before they couldn't."

Chances are my classmates will keep benefiting from boot camp in the months ahead. Of the 20 Domino's managers who attended an earlier LC boot camp last May, three have already been promoted to supervisor and are now overseeing clusters of about ten stores. "When our managers get back to work, we find that they experience something consciously or subconsciously that they can link back to their [boot camp] experience," says Paul Zarb, national director of corporate training at Domino's. "I have nothing scientific to back this up, but something triggers the lessons you learned out in the woods when you need them."

Indeed, though it may not be very '90s of me to say so, our stint in the "military" has convinced me that you don't need a seance conducted by Deepak Chopra to lead your team effectively. Your workers will surely revolt if you start serving Army rations in the cafeteria, but if you make them be all that they can be, they may even thank you for it.