In retrospect, when I sought the counsel of these more experienced men, I had been seeking simple answers to complex questions - do this, not that - because I was unsure of myself and stressed by the demands of my new job. But simple answers like the “start high” pricing advice - so seductive in its rationality - had distracted me and kept me from asking more fundamental questions.

They responded to a difficult question with a related question of their own.

They had asked themselves a spectacular breakthrough question. And they had gotten there by asking themselves a cluster of other questions first. It was a logical and beautiful sequence, supple and able to leap from one snare to a question to a different snare to another question until it arrived finally at that most liberating question of all. In later years I would label that one an ‘incisive question’, because it was, indeed.

And he insisted with every tool of his personality that they see the situation as he saw it, that they feel as he felt or as he convinced himself he did. As he worked on them, they began to tentatively sense – not as with James, that they were led by a man of admirable vision and ability – but that they were in this together, and that they wanted themselves to succeed.

James didn’t worry. What greater purpose could these people find? And with so many minds applied, the pace of improvements to the machine was accelerating into another order of magnitude. He wasn’t having to shove things forward any more; the company was moving of its own accord.