Like Volkswagen, Wells Fargo's avoidable failure was not the result of one bad apple but of a system that demanded hitting targets so ambitious they could only be met by deceit. Employees operated in a culture of fear that brooked no dissent. Rather than manifesting interest in salespeople's experiences while executing the cross-selling strategy and using what was being learned in the field to shift or sharpen the company's strategy, managers sent a clear message: produce – or else.

I don't mean to imply that working in a fearless organization takes more effort or a tremendously difficult undertaking. It doesn't. But initially, when we've been entrenched in fear and its attendant mental frameworks, it's not always obvious.

Tom and Dan were the perfect bosses in this regard. They would talk about valuing ability more than experience, and they believed in putting people in roles that required more of them than they knew they had in them. It wasn’t that experience wasn’t important, but they “bet on brains,” as they put it, and trusted that things would work out if they put talented people in positions where they could grow, even if they were in unfamiliar territory.

James, ensconced in solitary concentration, in a room dedicated to the life of the mind, felt his hulking fears shrink back to their rightful size. What intelligent person could seriously get wound up by the diktats of some corporate HR team?

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.