A project has failed. Someone asks whose decision it was. Alex raises her hand. What did she just do?
What this film is
A fiction. Alex, Leo and the manager are invented. The ideas come from the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001). It is my reading of her work, paraphrased and simplified.
Three ideas from Anscombe
One action, several descriptions. Lifting her arm, answering the question, taking responsibility: not several actions, one action described more and more widely. The wider descriptions depend on the world around the arm.
The question “Why?” shows which descriptions are intended. Each answer gives a wider description of the same act. “I didn't know” refuses the question: the description may be true, but it is not intended.
Intention is not a hidden spark. It shows in the reasons a person can give, and in what she goes on to do.
About the leadership part
The scenes with the manager at the door, the two rooms and the blame in private are mine, not Anscombe's. They apply her ideas to how leaders act and how they judge others.
Sources
G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention, Basil Blackwell, 1957.
The opening question follows Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 621.