On August 31, 1975, John Richard Boyd retired after twenty-four years in the Air Force. He was forty-eight years old. … He was a natural leader, but he did not have the sort of management skills the Air Force looked for when they promoted colonels. Robert Coram, Boyd, the Fighter Pilot who Changed the Art of War, p. 312.

Had Boyd been promoted and stayed in the Air Force, few of us would ever have heard of him.