Brian Keenan (1993)An Evil Cradling, Vintage.
Peter M. Senge (1993)The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the
Learning Organization, Random House.
At the age of fifteen, in the middle of my junior year, I quit Exeter,
one of the most highly regarded preparatory schools in the nation.
As I look back on that turning point in my life, I am amazed at the
grace that gave me the courage to do it. Not only was I dropping
out of a prestigious prep school against my parents’ wishes, but I
was walking away from a golden WASP track that had all been
laid out for me. Hardly aware that it was what I was doing, I was
taking my first giant step out of my entire culture. That culture of
“the establishment” was what one was supposed to aspire to, and
I was throwing it away. And where was I to go? I was forging into
the total unknown. I was so terrified I thought I should seek the
advice of some of Exeter’s faculty before finalising such a dreadful
decision. But which of the faculty?
The first candidate who came to mind was my advisor. He had
barely spoken to me for two and a half years, but he was reputedly
kindly. A second obvious candidate was the crusty old dean of the
school, known to be beloved to tens of thousands of alumni. But I
thought that three was a good round number, and the third choice
was more difficult. I finally hit upon Mr. Lynch, my Maths teacher, a
somewhat younger man. I chose him not because we had any
relationship or because he seemed to be a particularly warm sort of
person—indeed, I found him a rather cold, mathematical kind of
fish—but because he had a reputation for being the faculty genius.
He’d been involved with some kind of high-level mathematics with
the Manhattan Project, and I thought I should check out what I was
considering with a “genius.”
I went first to my kindly advisor. He let me talk for about two
minutes and then gently broke in. “It’s true that you’re
GIVING AND RECEIVING FEEDBACK 3475 How could you reproduce a similar system to the one in Cisco
Systems whereby you are getting continuous, real-time feedback?REFERENCES