Expectations were high, my performance low. I knew the subject, but somehow couldn’t articulate my ideas coherently. Delegates didn’t hold back when it came to criticism and told me afterwards that my strategy was unclear, my content muddled and that I had given them no clear direction. It would have been so easy for me to have run my presentation by Louis in the days before I gave it - but I hadn’t wanted to subject myself to negative feedback. So I’d blundered on. I felt that I’d blown it and feared being sent back home.

For James, there was no sense that expanding Tesco’s sales onto the web was what the human race urgently needed. It didn’t have to be. This was a ladder. And yet: he’d come first in the most prestigious course at the most famous university in the world, and he was sitting here in his boxers copying and pasting the item code for ironing boards. It didn’t feel as if he were ascending to greatness.

his pride had suffered. His weariness was still outmatched by fury. He did not pause to consider whether the HR people were right, or whether McKinsey was still the right path upwards. He refused to lose.

science. Really, this was a lesson in humility. You couldn’t blame the outside world for not conforming to your ideas. It wasn’t the world that was wrong, it was you. Either you could be humiliated and angry and hurt, or you could let that go and start building a better model. He began to search where he always had: within himself. In some ways, it wasn’t complicated: if tidal energy wasn’t going to beat gas and coal on price, and you still needed tidal to win, you had to assume that gas and coal were finished.

Javier might make a better head of engineering than Alan. Maybe. It was premature. James needed to watch him for a while. Javier was not a follower; he would try to impose himself on the company. That would cost stress and effort to restrain. But better a strong beast you had to fight to keep in harness than an obstinate little mule with no imagination who only ever said that it couldn’t be done.