What happened to this school that was suppose to last into the New System? Theories on what mistakes and gross incompetence took place at Gilead, from a business and "Mission" stand point.
1. The screening process appears to have been a failure, were these men and women really evaluated to how much stress they could endure, psychological frailties, propensity to fail to adapt to their new culture? It's one thing to pioneer for ten or fifteen years in Santa Barbara, California or Branson, Missouri but try pioneering in a Fourth World Country (Liberia is less than a Third World, it's bad!) and watch Little Jimmy come running home.
The United States Special Forces has a failure rate from 60% to as high as 80% for teams like "Seal Team Six"
What could the Watchtower have learned from programs in the military designed to get the brightest and best men for the job?
2. Why was this man, or this woman picked to attend Gilead? Was their ability to obey their elder body, endure pioneering in easy/friendly territory for fifteen years their challenge? Was it their ability to think, in a conformist manner, blindly follower instructions when men are present, but become befuddled and discombobulated when their mentors left them alone?
The latest "Kingdom School For Elders" has been a total flop! All those days of instruction would have been better spent, on men and women who really cared about the Flock. Most of what we learned, would have helped the intelligent, stronger psychologically sound men, not those holding on to their position by a thread (one hour less in field service, and Poof! demoted!)
Our area had several suicides last year, that left elders and our circuit servant scratching their head, really demonstrating how weak these men are. They have no ability to deal with issues their sheep are going through, most congregations are on auto-pilot, just hoping some Captian "Sulley" type CO, will eventual land this thing! Their inability to deal with challenging situations on the local arena, leads to failure in the foreign Mission fields on the highest percentage! Something went badly wrong at Gilead, their screener for candidates, their teachers, the foriegn region specialist, language teachers failed!
What does this say about the Org, when Mormons, Fundamentals and others are sending more men into the "Mission Work" as we retreat? We continue to pour money into COs, DOs and higher upper echelon, which are nothing more than Sunk Costs.
Sending good money to chase bad money (training old twisted men, who won't change) is bad business. If the Watchtower is a manufacture of Gospel peaching missionaries, they might consider outsourcing their management to India for a tenth of the price.
"The Army Special Forces is a ‘high reliability occupation,' one in which demands are high and failure can be
catastrophic (Flin, 2001; Picano et al., 2006). The best
knowledge available should be applied to selection of
personnel for such occupations. This study has found
that individuals who successfully complete a rigorous
Army Special Forces candidate school are signi?cantly
higher in personality hardiness than those who fail.
Effects are modest, but offer a signi?cant and noteworthy contribution to the growing evidence for positive personality factors that predict success in extreme
environments. Considering both theory and empirical
?ndings on hardiness as a personal stress-resiliency
resource (Ouellette, 1993), it makes sense that hardiness is associated with successful performance under
the stressful conditions of Special Forces candidate
school. The identi?cation of psychological characteristics such as hardiness that predict success in high
demand assessment and selection programs may also
help in the design of training approaches to increase"