David,

When I remember my military service 45 years ago, I had the same experience in the great exercise operations we did with my unit as I had as a re-enactor - only a very limited view of what was passing on and what my unit did in the field. And indeed, one can't compare exercises with real war, but memoirs, written several years after the facts are always written with the knowledge of the bird's eyeview, but also fouled with the changing memory nduring all those years, and will never give the reality but only the limited view of one person, depending of his rank in the army.

As I have also been a superior inspector in the fiscal administration, head of service for a region, (= a county) for 40 years, my experience of people and companies who were abusing the fiscal laws in my country was also limited to that region, and I couldn't understand that my colleages in other regions did extrapolate their experience to the whole country. It was only when I became director in Brussels, responsable for the whole town of Brussels that I could see the whole picture for Brussels, and also for the whole country during the meetings with my colleague-directors of the other provinces (= equivalent for states in the US) -The same applies in all public administrations, inclusive the army, what I did learn during my studies to get the Master Degree in Public Management (or rather Public Organisations), studies which I did some 10 - 15 years ago (from 2003 to 2008 together with my full-time job as Director), in which this views were further developped in accordance with the theories of how managing has to be fulfilled.

And I highly recommend you the lecture of the book, given in the link.

Marc