Perspective

This is one of the stories that I tell. I didn't make up the original but in the best traditions of storytelling, I added quite a lot. Naturally, it contains a great deal of truth...


Some guys were driving to a business meeting in the mountains. As they went down a steep and winding road, the brakes failed. The driver nearly lost control and bounced them off several crash barriers before bringing the car to a stop. Shaken, they climbed out and started discussing what to do.


One guy was the company Quality Manager: "We must have a meeting to talk about this and together we can work out a programmer of continuous improvement that will prevent this happening again!"

The Training Manager demurred: "I see this as a Training issue!" he announced, "when we get back to headquarters I shall update the training manual to include motor maintenance and defensive driving techniques"

The Engineer rolled his eyes. "I have as Swiss Army knife and some duct tape. I will repair the bakes on this vehicle!"

The HR guy (who had studied counselling) could stand it no longer and burst in. "You're all completely on the wrong track! What we should do is to sit down and share how we feel about this terrible thing that has happened to us!"

The software engineer looked at the HR guy sneeringly, "You're right about them being wrong but you're wrong too - what we should do is push the car back up to the top of the hill, get in, drive down and see if it does it again"