The whole collection · No. 24 of 36

The trolley

For impossible choices.

1967 · after Philippa Foot

Where it comes from

Philippa Foot’s runaway tram, later Judith Jarvis Thomson’s trolley, asks whether you’d switch it onto a track where it would hit one person instead of five. Generations of students have argued about the lever.

What it teaches (try it first)

Most impossible choices were built upstream, by budgets, timetables and old decisions. Leaders spend whole careers at the lever. The real work is usually in the track.

Ask yourself. Which of your hard choices did an old decision build for you?

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