Paul and Harry worked in a large science laboratory. The laboratory had contracts with governments and manufacturing companies throughout the world. They specialised in analytical technology in areas such as food, pharmaceuticals, environmental pollution, health and safety and forensics. The laboratory employed some 600 scientists, many of them graduates in their first jobs.

Paul’s and Harry’s backgrounds were remarkably similar. They were both chemists with PhDs. They were both recruited on the same university ‘milk round’ and even shared the same starting date at the laboratory. They were both in their late 30s, married, with mortgages and young families. They headed parallel departments specialising in different business sectors and were both well thought of and earmarked for promotion.

There were, however, a number of ways in which they differed. Their personalities, for example. Paul was analytical and calm whereas Harry, despite his training as a scientist, was intuitive and flamboyant. These tendencies naturally affected the way they approached their work. Paul, when faced with a problem, would reflect and ‘sleep on it’. Harry would rush in, impatient to find a quick solution. Paul was quiet and thoughtful at management meetings. When he spoke, people listened because they knew he would offer a considered opinion. Harry, on the other hand, was cheerfully spontaneous, with much to say, happy to speculate and think out loud. It was Harry who would volunteer to speak at conferences or to rush round the country visiting universities on a recruitment drive.

Despite their different temperaments, the men were friendly and co-operative to one another. They each respected the other’s skills. It was a splendid example of the attraction of opposites. They often conferred together about how best to deal with awkward situations in their respective teams. Paul appreciated the way Harry would urge him to take decisive action earlier than he otherwise would. And there were numerous occasions when Harry benefited from Paul’s wise counsel not to act before he had gathered some more facts.

Paul’s approach was heavily influenced by the teachings of the late W Edwards Deming, the quality guru. Paul totally subscribed to Deming’s ideas about the importance of processes and the need to understand the causes of underlying variances. He was a keen advocate of statistical process control, and flow diagrams, Pareto analyses and control charts were much in evidence in his laboratory.

Naturally Paul did his best to persuade Harry to adopt the same disciplines in his laboratory, but Harry was resistant. He argued that problems provided the challenges that made life interesting; preventing problems was merely boring. Harry would gently tease Paul by asking him if his charts showed him how many problems he was preventing. He was adamant that you never acquired merit by preventing problems – only by fixing them.

‘That’s what managers are for, to solve problems’ Harry would say. ‘If there weren’t any problems you’d be redundant.’

Paul’s faith in prevention being better than cure was, if anything, strengthened by Harry’s taunts. He was confident that it was worthwhile and he continued to pore over histograms and scatter diagrams in a bid to detect and reduce defects in his laboratory’s working processes. So convinced was he that the Deming approach made sense that he produced a paper for the board based on Deming’s Fourteen Points for Management. The paper was presented at a meeting but the directors struggled with much of the philosophy. They couldn’t envisage a workplace that eliminated inspection and replaced it with a culture that made employees responsible for the quality of their work. A particular sticking point was the idea that fear must be driven out of the workplace. This suggestion provoked an outbreak of denial as director after director insisted that fear was not an issue in the organisation.

After a few weeks, it was announced that Paul’s and Harry’s immediate boss was going to take a year’s sabbatical. This was quite unexpected and not normal practice. It transpired that their boss wanted time to write a book and, after many years of service, had negotiated a special arrangement with the board. Paul and Harry were the obvious contenders to take over in his absence. It was clearly a splendid opportunity to enjoy higher visibility with senior management and establish their credentials for a permanent position.

Both Paul and Harry were invited to give a presentation to the board showing why the job should be theirs. The gist of Paul’s case was that he had saved the company money and enhanced quality by focusing on prevention and continuous improvement. Harry’s case was that he was a proven problem-solver and effective decision-maker.

It was no contest. Harry got the job and, to his credit, resisted the temptation to say ‘I told you so’.