My attempts to mold him failed, and I felt increasingly frustrated. He thought I’d fire him. Fortunately, for him and me, I began to grasp that he had not failed me; rather, I had failed him by putting him in a role out of frame with his encodings. Furthermore, I felt somewhat responsible for his future; I did not want to see this wonderful young man start his professional life getting fired. So, I began making a series of iterative steps, testing him with different tasks that drew upon what I sensed to be his intellectual gifts, and he showed signs of flourishing.

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.

“On the downside, he doesn’t see himself sometimes. When something he does is shit – you know, he does sometimes actually just make a mistake – he can’t see it and thinks it’s gone wrong for some complicated reason to do with him being so brilliant.

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.

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.