You are the customer of the supplier,” I said. “Why doesn’t the same principle apply?”

“Well, we recently renegotiated our lease agreements with the mall operators and owners,” he said. “We went in with a Win/Win attitude. We were open, reasonable, conciliatory. But they saw that position as being soft and weak, and they took us to the cleaners.”

“Well, why did you go for Lose/Win?” I asked.

“We didn’t. We went for Win/Win.”

“I thought you said they took you to the cleaners.”

“They did.”

“In other words, you lost.”

“That’s right.”

“And they won.”

“That’s right.”

“So what’s that called?”

When he realized that what he had called Win/Win was really Lose/Win, he was shocked. And as we examined the long-term impact of that Lose/Win, the suppressed feelings, the trampled values, the resentment that seethed under the surface of the relationship, we agreed that it was really a loss for both parties in the end. If this man had had a real Win/Win attitude, he would have stayed longer in the communication process, listened to the mall owner more, then expressed his point of view with more courage. He would have continued in the Win/Win spirit until a solution was reached they both felt good about. And that solution, that Third Alternative, would have been synergistic—probably something neither of them had thought of on his own.

He couldn’t see how it made any difference to Tesco’s grand plans if he gave his presentation on Friday instead of tomorrow. But his manager insisted. It was irritating to be subject to someone else’s arbitrariness. It was just a culture of performative zeal. McKinseyites were supposed to be the shock troops of capitalism, sacrificing themselves to smash through problems. James was supposed to be eagerly hurling himself into the fray. But he couldn’t quite get himself geed up.

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.

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.