The weekend before last I went to a party at Sandhurst. I have already written here about British army education, so I made a point of asking around amongst the guests about educational matters. I struck gold. I had two conversations in particular which I have kept meaning to report on here. Sorry for the delay, but I know that I can remember all the bits that matter.

Sandhurst, for those who don't know, is the place out to the west of London where they incubate the new officers of the British Army, and conversation one was with a Sandhurst history lecturer. I asked him what he lectured about.

The most interesting bit of his answer concerned his choice of historical campaign to describe for his students. He deliberately chose a losing campaign, the invasion of Russia by Germany during the Second World War, as viewed from and experienced by the German army.

He mentioned the way that the German army is renowned for the initiative and independence entrusted to and shown by its junior officers, but, he pointed out, all that changes when things go seriously wrong. Then, the people at the top exercise tight control, which all adds to the grief.

I like the idea that young officers are asked to think about what army life is like when things go badly wrong. This is, if you think about it, an indoor, classroom, version of what those sergeants shout at their charges out in the open air. Are you tough enough for all this misery?!? Because it is misery, you little …!!!

For some reason I found myself asking if he could always spot the future high fliers. He said he could spot them, but that he could never tell if they would fly high in the Army, or in Civvy Street. This strongly suggests that the education of British army officers is relevant to life generally, and not just to army life, right? Yes he said, that is so.

This latter proposition was spookily confirmed for me by conversation number two, which was with a guy who had worked for most of his adult life and still worked for Motorola, the US based (but worldwide in operations) portable radio company. The man I talked with, whose expertise seemed to be government regulation (a very big deal in the teleommunications trade, alas) explained that, just like the German army, Motorola's people are famous for the amount of creative freedom they're allowed. The atmosphere, he said, was "collegiate", rather than based on command and control. You could work for years with Motorola people, he said, and develop a profound sense of just how good they were, but still not know what their official position was in the official pecking order.

Until things go wrong, as they famously did when the tech-boom went bust just a few years ago. Suddenly – and the guy described it all very eloquently – the survival of the company involved making brutally harsh decisions in the space of a few hours, so fast did the orders collapse and the money start haemorrhaging out . Command was abruptly centralised. Hideously expensive outsiders, who knew how to do command and control, were hastily brought in. About half the worldwide work force of nearly two hundred thousand were fired, pretty much overnight. Bloody hell.

Since that traumatic time, forms of business expertise that Motorola had tended to neglect in the good old days, most notably marketing, were bought in, at further vast expense, but in ways that are, I am told, showing results. A friend in her early twenties with whom I attended the party later told me that whereas not so long ago Motorola portable phones were rather passé now they are "cool".