You've delivered product to the customer (your metrics prove it), and you've leveraged the best practices of business to yield a value-added solution. What do you want, a medal?
The character of a nation's officer corps says much about what that country values-not only what it fights for but also what it feels is worth preserving. Ancient Greek historian Polybius stated that "mankind possesses no greater guide to conduct than the knowledge of the past." 1 But our officer corps today has more in common with British satirist Evelyn Waugh's Hooper, with "no illusions about the Army—or rather no special illusions distinguishable from the general, enveloping fog from which he observed the universe. . . . [H]e had an overmastering regard for efficiency and, drawing on his modest commercial experience, he would sometimes say of the ways of the Army . . . 'They couldn't get away with that in business.'" 2
