So forever in the future.
                               Shall I battle as of yore,
                               Dying to be born a fighter,
                               But to die again, once more.
 
                                                   George Patton

Patton believed in reincarnation and felt it was his fate to lead men in desperate battles for the destiny of a cause. Melodramatic, perhaps. Yet who's to say he was wrong? For the rest of us, the perspective of time has lengthened, everything stands in a different setting and the flickering lamp gropes along the trail of the past trying to reconstruct its decisions, to revive its echoes and revive the passion of our former days. We don't have the luxury of Patton's "many masters, many lives."
 
Nothing is ever going to be perfect. From the current malaise and organizational chaos through the years ahead, someone will profit while someone else perishes. In war, Patton knew a good solution applied today could save lives, material and time tomorrow. You can spend all your time rethinking and revising your plans postponing the fight indefinitely, or you can accept there comes a time when deliberating must stop, so that action can begin. Today we see far too many leaders waiting for the perfect plan, the right moment to assert aggressive competitive measures. Their "troops" are paying a price through declining morale and sense-of-purpose.
 
No one can be 100 percent right 100 percent of the time. The best you can do is to assess your resources weighed against your competition's assets, planning around not what a competitor will do but instead on what that competitor is capable of doing. And even on the occasion of temporary failure (and you will experience some), it's a learning experience that prevents greater errors in your next critical situation. All together too many managers and leaders have become conditioned to fear failure, and spend more and more time in the shadows of caution playing not to lose. Ask yourself, "Am I afraid of failing?" In the small hours when we benchmark ourselves against the "us" of today and the "us" of ten years ago, is it possible to have cast ourselves into a position whereby we can't achieve that which others say is impossible? One's fear of loss is ten times more powerful than the anticipation of gain.
 
Only people who never try anything bold or uncommonly aggressive make no mistakes; and that's the greatest mistake of all. In the current climate we have a plethora of reasons over which to be frustrated, even angry, but spending much effort there is a lot like rocking in a rocking chair. It occupies your time, but you don't go anywhere.
 
Deadly diseases to avoid include the most crippling affliction of them all: the lack of constancy of purpose. Add to that, too much emphasis on short term profit versus longer term capital strategy, narrow or obtuse evaluation of performance based on old benchmarks, excessive inaction based on timidity, and you may end up a spectator instead of a general. It's a simple choice: assertive warrior today or forever a by-stander.