Quote:
Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot  These were people I knew, when I was in the military. As I mentioned, they were placed in identical conditions. Same food; same clothes; same number of hours of sleep; same training; same bathrooms; same haircut; beds of the same size and shape; same guns; same distance to be run at 5:30 am every morning.
Their situation is as "same" as you'll ever get. Why are the responses so different? I think it's largely got to do with what's in their heads. |
I feel compelled to return to a fundamental dictum of consulting: "things are the way they are because they got that way".
If a new customer tells me that their software developers are turning out crap, the superficial response to that is, "Crappy developers. They need motivation, training, or firing". More often, though, it's crappy managers, crappy processes, crappy corporate culture, and addle-pated strategies that are to blame.
WHY did that one guy commit suicide? Because something different was in his head? If so, WHY was that thing there?
Did he invite it? Did he neglect his mental discipline until it could enter?
Or was he so constructed that the one-size-fit-all military environment handled him in ways that were inappropriate for him? Created situations that he was not capable of handling?
Maybe he would have been Singapore's next poet laureate. We'll never know now. He was just that dumb wimpy guy who couldn't hack it. Who had goofy ideas in his head that he listened to. The killjoy who didn't see it as a fun adventure.
--Bob