When I trained troops, the type-A high achievers always stood out, mainly when I told them they weren't good enough; often they melted down on me. A life of easy wins and excelling in the school system had ill-prepared them for tasks and skills that sometimes you needed to do wrong, before you could get right. Their self-esteem and "Confidence" couldn't get them a successful section attack inside an hour. It took time and it strained them much more than it should have.
I've often noticed how we always win in our exercises, even when our performance is dismal. killed soldiers "respawn", we tell the enemy force to tone it down and die politely and entire platoons re-set to try it again in order not to upset the OC or CO's plan. So, being socially inept and unable to read those kinds of cues; I asked. Officers and peers and senior NCOs. I got the same answer;
"People don't learn from failure."
"If you tried something the first time and you failed and failed badly, you'd never want to try again."
This felt like one of those times, when either my autism was colouring my perceptions or I, as a soldier just needed to note my disagreement, click my heels, shut up and get in line. Because; you know? Maybe normal people are like that.
My counter-argument was to the point; "But, the enemy always gets a vote."
Now, I speak as a life-long loser. I could not be more different from the type-A over-achieving athletes I've trained. Clumsy, slow, physically and socially awkward, my life is a litany of failure; I've been a terrible student my whole life, I wasn't even good at video games, I'm a poor shot and easily confused by the more socially adept. If I didn't learn from failure; I'd never learn anything. The things in life I had to learn from bloody-minded tenacity; eliminated every wrong way to get something right are legion. I'd have argued the opposite; how can you learn from success?
If I gave up or rather; was allowed to give up on anything I tried and failed at the first time, no matter how disastrous, embarrassing or painful, I'd never have got anywhere in my life. We're talking about war here, why all the optional language? As if we have a choice in the matter.
When I take people shooting, I don't start them on something that will hurt them. But I also don't add any holes to their target to boost their ego, either. This is a very concrete discipline we're part of here. Very absolute, very win-lose and things do not always go our way.
One of the smartest things I ever read was by a guy named Tom Kratman, he said that training has three purposes;
1. To enhance old skills and acquire new ones.
2. To test doctrine and equipment.
3. and, to select amongst ourselves.
Here #2 is key; I think we tend to worship our doctrines and part of how we do that is by our we-always-win mentality. What we should be doing is testing our doctrines to destruction. Then Sitting back and asking why and trying something else. So you say, but Shrek; we have that! We have Standards and our Centres of Excellence. In 7 years of teaching, I submitted over a dozen PO/EO reviews. none of them went anywhere. Your system is broken. And I think, from my experience in the CF and elsewhere that these edifices we have for advancement and change actually work as bulwarks against those forces.
One of the things I learned in school was that once you have an organization for accommodations, you never really need to accommodate anyone ever again; you can reject everything on the basis of your expertise and defend it by it's own existence. Not a shock; Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy in action; protecting the institution, even at the cost of the very goals that institution expressly exists to forward.
