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If only I could get directly to the president, then the success of the idea would be inevitable. Even without that, surely it would be possible to launch a pilot scheme in one or more of the vice presidencies? Once that was implemented, then the idea could spread to the whole organization. Now I had to choose.

Spend time resurrecting my career, either here or elsewhere? Or go flat out for change? Coming back from Lausanne in September 1996, I made my decision. I opted to set aside any idea of career advancement and commit myself wholeheartedly to making change happen, accepting whatever indignities I might have to suffer. I would do whatever it took, even if the effort were to take a decade.

As it happened, an opportunity appeared within just a few days. And it was grander than anything I could have anticipated.2 Late on Wednesday afternoon, September 18, 1996, I was sitting in Jean-François Rischard’s office. We’d been discussing how to move the knowledge-sharing initiative forward. We both thought that if we only could get to the president, given his stance and his personality, he was bound to support the idea. The timing was ideal, since the World Bank’s annual meeting was just days away: the president’s speech was a perfect opportunity to announce a bold new initiative. The problem was how to get to the president: he was surrounded by those pesky centurion guards.

After discussing the ways of getting the idea to the president, we finally decided that it was too risky. At the time, the centurion guards were on high alert, indeed expecting people to be submitting risky new ideas to the president. If we tried to get to him then, without their blessing, there would be terrible punishments and taxes. So we decided the timing wasn’t right. Instead we would wait until after the annual meeting. Then in the dark of night, when no one was watching, we would meet quietly with the president and sell the idea to him and we would be off to the races. Just then, at the very moment we were concluding our conversation and deciding to lie low for the moment, Rischard got a phone call.

It was the president. Apparently he was in a taxicab in a traffic jam in New York, reading a draft of the speech that he was to give in a matter of days to the annual meeting of the World Bank. He was calling on his cell phone to say that the draft speech was pablum, pure pablum—not a single new idea in it. Surely, he said, there was at least one good idea in the whole goddamn organization?

Rischard said that, as a matter of fact, there was, and began sketching the idea of knowledge management: how the Bank should pool its expertise on everything from civil service reform to electricity generation in central databases, massively expanding the reach of its ideas in the global struggle against poverty. He spoke for five minutes, then five more minutes, and presently he hit the fifteen-minute mark.

The president was saying it was intriguing, actually quite good, and maybe he would think about it.3 That night, the president went to dinner and tried out the idea on his dinner guests. They said it was excellent. The next day when he came in to the office, Rischard and I were asked to draft a speech that the president would give to the board of directors.

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