O/T: The Bail Out

Lew Hodgett · 2008-09-25T03:01:30+00:00

The subject takes me back to 1960, a few weeks before graduation.Was in an industrial engineering class, the instructor had spent a lifetime in the real world, and up to then, not much in the class room.The subject of the Edsel, the 1958 FoMoCo screw up, the largest business screw up since the Curtis-Wright mess of 1940, was brought up for discussion.Still remember the instructors advice:Class, if you are going to screw up, make it as big as possible.They fire you for making small mistakes.They won't fire you if the mistake is big enough because that will make the guy who hired you look like an idiot.Almost 50 years later, sounds like there is about to be a repeat application of that advice.Lew