How I got here: PT1

Well it's been a while since I've written on this thing and before I start into the weeds of this I suspect I need to go back to where I've been.

Last time I was here in Iraq it was nothing short of a debacle. To make a long story short I was kicked out of Iraq and banned from coming back. This wasn't an Army decision mind you, this was a situation generated due to the fact that the manager I was working for had a fundamentally different world view that what I had on what it means to be successful. On top of that the manager is an egomanic and (I would argue parnaoid) of the highest order. If you didn't move lockstep with sometimes hairbrained schemes then you were out of order. The guy managed out with a philosophy of fear.

That in itself didn't bother me so much I can deal with egomanics they are a simple lot when it gets down to it. The problem was that I never took him seriously. The thing is this projcet that I was on didn't take in to account the fact that I had

1. Been in Iraq for a year previously. That meant that the financial impetus and pressurers of NEEDING the money wasn't there for me. You have a fundamentally different type of employee when they don't have debt guiding their decsion making fucntions. I would argue that a debt free employee has a larger potential of being a more vocally principled employee. The will work from an ethical view point over a financal viewpoint (which I did my first go round).

The manager's motivator was the fact that as manager the power to you fired was this mangers perogative. This fear worked for alot of people but, for me...not so much. I'd been laid off before, I learned early on I could get another job, losing a job isn't a problem for me on top of that I squirreled away a pretty good nest egg. While I couldn't retire on it, I could easily last over a few years.

2. Been in a leadership position for a large part of my deployment last time. This allowed me to generate policy and work independently with my mandate being focus on results (results = customer satisfaction) candor for the most part was the order of the day.


This manager stifled innovation, the manager had one world view and that was it. If the manager didn't come up with the idea then it wasn't a good idea. I never worked in an enviorment like that. So in hindsight I could have just shut up and color but, the manager was out and out wrong. These arguements resulted in me getting sent home becasue I wasn't a team player.

Trust me I cried all the way to the bank.