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".