āOn the downside, he doesnāt see himself sometimes. When something he does is shit ā you know, he does sometimes actually just make a mistake ā he canāt see it and thinks itās gone wrong for some complicated reason to do with him being so brilliant.
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āNo, not usually. Oh, well. A rare mind harnessed to making the rich marginally richer. All in a lifeās work, eh?ā
He couldnāt see how it made any difference to Tescoās grand plans if he gave his presentation on Friday instead of tomorrow. But his manager insisted. It was irritating to be subject to someone elseās 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 couldnāt quite get himself geed up.
Heād never experienced imposter syndrome. As a boy, when his school didnāt offer calculus, he taught himself. A formative experience. Usually he was more able than required. But for the first time he did not feel equal to the task. He had only a human mind, limited, fallible, trained on the flawed theories of the day. His only tools were a few flimsy degrees, some things heād read, some hunches and convictions that over the years had solidified into fixed beliefs.
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 ā not as with James, that they were led by a man of admirable vision and ability ā but that they were in this together, and that they wanted themselves to succeed.
The mistake must have been to work on the problems that happened to be in front of him, and not to seek other, more promising ones. Heād been sucked in by the work itself, by his capacity for it.