What makes West Point Goats so interesting?
Everybody loves an underdog. The story of the Goat demonstrates that
you don’t have to be an academic superstar in order to be successful or to make a difference. I think that military leadership and bravery and other qualities of that type are not necessarily learned in a classroom. Somebody who studies all the time, obeys all the rules, and gets good grades may not necessarily be a great leader of men and may not necessarily be someone who has the kind of decision making qualities that will lead to victory. What I am exploring is another aspect of military leadership and also the qualities of human bravery and that type of achievement.
At West Point, has there been any relationship between class rank and career success?
I never ran across a formal study, but there is folklore about that—that it’s always the people from the middle and below who make the best officers and leaders. Now you sometimes find people who graduated at the top and went on to greatness—like Robert E. Lee was second in his class. Or Douglas MacArthur, for example. But frequently you find people like Dwight Eisenhower, who graduated somewhere in the middle of his class and said, “If anybody saw signs of greatness in me while at West Point they kept it to themselves.” Or Ulysses S. Grant, who was in the middle of his class
Read more:
http://failuremag.com/feature/article/the_goats_of_west_point/P3/#ixzz2zjrUNAj7
