““This was a pivotal event in his career, as well as a personal epiphany. Often, when a man is young and idealistic, he believes that if he works hard and does the right thing, success will follow. This was what Boyd’s mother and childhood mentors had told him. But hard work and success do not always go together in the military, where success is defined by rank, and reaching higher rank requires conforming to the military’s value system. Those who do not conform will one day realize that the path of doing the right thing has diverged from the path of success, and then they must decide which path they will follow through life. Almost certainly, he realized that if he was not promoted early to lieutenant colonel after all that he had done, he would never achieve high rank.””