A very odd response but I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. Not exactly a graduate of the Command And Staff College, are you?
“A very odd response but I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. Not exactly a graduate of the Command And Staff College, are you?”
Any response from Chainmail that rose above drearily stereotypical would have been the real surprise.
And he’s quite right - no “service school” ever permitted me to darken their door. I merely stayed where I was and performed actual work, while those in the throes of burning ambition schemed and struggled to one-up each other, congratulating themselves on how much more they “cared” and how much extra effort they were making. Not to mention the time they spent gloating in advance, over the rich rewards they were going to reap, after they did their overlords’ bidding, “turned things around” and “pumped new life into the organization.”
Ironically, “actual work” always required the expenditure of a surprising percentage of one’s time counteracting the nonsense that flowed day after day, week after week, downhill from graduates of Command and Staff College or other senior service schools. Their egos were rarely matched by their judgment and could never be matched by their knowledge, because their star-wearing mentors had arranged it so their precious proteges could be promoted early: they simply hadn’t yet had the time, to learn their job. They were full of enthusiasm, but that wasn’t of much use compared to knowing what was going on, who was working on what with whom, or where, or why. They were forever on the edge of snarling the system to the point where chaos would take over, and nothing would get done.
I’d hazard the guess that us hapless dolts who never got to be some GOFO’s fair-haired kids had use up 20 percent to 33 percent of our time, stopping the eager beavers from reinventing the wheel.
For all you hard chargers, that decodes to one-fifth to one-third. If you’re deigning to listen.