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Jul
03

CI: Telling Hard Truths

Tom Hawes Competitive Intelligence, Organizational Development Add your comment

TeacherI was in sixth grade. This was the first year of school that we changed classes to learn different subjects and we had 6 different teachers (one for each subject). My second period class was English and it was taught by an older woman that inspired fear in all of her students (including me). Luckily, we knew that she could only give us the dreaded homework assignments on the designated “English homework” nights.

One day she assigned us homework on the wrong night! No one said anything to her at the time. Who would have dared? Later that day when we were with our favorite teacher during sixth period, everyone began complaining about the English homework that we had been given. “It’s not right!” we declared together like a choir that was trained to sing in harmony.

Then, much to our surprise and consternation, our favorite teacher said, “I’m just going to get Ms. English and bring her right over.” The class became silent as we waited. A proverbial pin might have dropped and we would have all heard it at that moment.

When Ms. English came in, she glared at us all with her hands on her hips and asked “who said that I assigned homework on the wrong night?”

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Competitive Intelligence, strategy
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