At 03:10 PM 9/6/2012, Terry Blanton wrote:
Gee, Peter, it brought a tear to my eye since it reminded me of how I treat my people. That guy was a great man!
He was. Peter, you were lucky to know him, and it looks like he gave you a gift beyond price.
My professional career and my life followed and I have applied always, stubbornly, in all the cases, the Chief EngineerÂ’s Principle. Sometimes I have succeeded sometimes notÂ…and this was it.
In the work I'm involved with, this is called being "cause in the matter." It is not a "fact." It is a stand, here the stand of the Engineer who accepts full responsibility for performance.
"Possible" and "impossible" are just stories, intepretations, they are neither true nor false. But when we declare that something will happen, something happens, if we continue the stand and don't just give up at the first excuse. What may seem impossible turns out to be possible, the limitations were a limitation in imagination. From getting into action, more possibilities appear, and some of them may be workable.
The Engineer excises "Can't" from his or her vocabulary. "I don't know how" is somewhat reasonable, but even that may be inauthentic. I might know and don't know that I know, because I don't yet recognize the connection.
