GEORGE C. MARSHALL by Peter F. Drucker

“George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army in World War II, was an uncompromising and exacting boss who refused to tolerate mediocrity, let alone failure. ‘I have a duty to the soldiers, their parents, and the country, to remove immediately any commander who does not satisfy the highest performance demands,’ Marshall said again and again. But he always asserted, ‘It was my mistake to have put this or that man in a command that was not the right command for him. It is therefore my job to think through where he belongs.’ Many of the men who emerged in World War II as highly successful commanders in the U.S. Army were once in the course of their careers removed by Marshall from an early assignment. But then Marshall thought through the mistake he had made and tried to figure out where that man belonged. And this explains, in large measure, why the American army, which had gone into World War II without a single one of its future general officers yet in a command position, produced an outstanding group of leaders in a few short years.”