Dwell on the track record before you condemn

People's memory is short. We tend to condemn even the smallest mistake without taking into account the larger picture. All the good work done in the past is quickly forgotten.

One day Standard Oil chief John D. Rockefeller learned that one of his senior executives had made a decision which had cost the company more than $2 million. Fearful of Rockefeller's wrath, most of the firm's other executives studiously avoided him. One notable exception was Edward T. Bedford.

Scheduled to meet with Rockefeller, Bedford arrived prepared for a long diatribe against the wayward executive. When he entered Rockefeller's office, the boss was bent over his desk busily scribbling on a pad of paper. Not wishing to interrupt, Bedford stood silently until Rockefeller finally looked up.

"Oh, it's you, Bedford," he remarked. "I suppose you've heard about our loss?" Bedford admitted that he had. "I've been thinking it over," Rockefeller said, "and before I ask the man in to discuss the matter, I've been making some notes."

Bedford later recalled: "Across the top of the page was written, 'Points in favor of Mr. ____.' There followed a long list of the man's virtues, including a brief description of how he had helped the company make the right decision on three separate occasions that had earned many times the cost of his recent error."

It was a lesson, Bedford later noted, which he never forgot.