How come everytime I am stabbed in the back, the fingerprints are my own? believe it or not, is the title of Prof Jerry B Harvey’s second book. His first was The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations of Management.

Jerry was one of the weirdest teachers I’ve met. His immediate response, after listening to my ideas about ‘dignity in the workplace’ - my dissertation topic - was “you do not want me to be your professor!”

He is an all-American Texan who speaks with a drawl and sits with his cowboy boots on the table.

I gently disagreed with him, but started working for him as a research assistant. After three years, I asked him to come on board my dissertation advisory panel as a proponent for my thesis. I had concluded that “some of us would rather learn some things the harder way”.