The brothers were close in age, identical twins in fact, born two minutes apart. This was a source of pride and pain as the “older” twin was always saying “Respect your elders!” The younger twin didn’t like that teasing much, but his frowns were not long-lived.

People usually had some difficulty telling the boys apart; they seemed to be exact physical copies of each other, but these boys did not grow up with the fun of the pranks of exchanging places as some twins do. For as identical as they were physically, whenever they spoke it was apparent that they were completely opposite in attitude.

The “older”  complained a great deal. He saw the defects in anything. A spring cloudless day was “a little cold.” A person’s friendly gesture caused him to wonder “What does he want?” When the family was making plans, he often said things like, “Let’s consider the worst-case scenario,” which sounded strange when he was six.

His brother’s disposition was completely opposite. He expected good from everything and everyone. On a day dark with rain clouds he would say,  “I think the sun is poking through.” When it poured, the youngest twin would say, “It’ll be over soon, in fact, I think it’s stopping.”

The neighbors called the boys “Dark” and “Sunny” though those were not their names. When unsure of something they would joke, “Let’s ask Dark and Sunny and then pick what’s in between, that’ll be closest to the truth.” Everyone would laugh.

Once when the boys were eight years-old, they overheard  a group of neighbors tell.one of these jokes. Dark was unhappy. “They like you better than me. They think I’m depressing. Why do they call me Dark?” Sunny tried to comfort his brother, “Come-on, bro, they’re only joking, let’s go walk the bridge railing.” “Too dangerous,” moaned Dark.

The parents grew concerned about their boys. The twins ninth birthday was approaching and the parents hatched a plan. The adults had always given their boys gifts that were the same or complementary, similar toys, games they could play together, matching clothes, with small differences so they could tell them apart in the wash.

This year they decided would be different.

The birthday came. The parents took Dark into a room with nine brightly wrapped presents that contained toys, and clothes.

They handed Sunny an old shovel and told him to clean the manure from the barn.

The birthday wore on. Dark opened each present. He thanked his parents for each one, but he also fault with each and all. This toy was “poorly made”. That one had “sharp edges.” This sweater was an inconsistent color. He hesitated to play with toys that might break or wear clothes because he might ruin them.

The parents despaired, but decided to check on Sunny.

They found the younger twin at work on the load of manure that they parents had delivered. The dung pile filled the barn  and the boy worked furiously. He was sweating, but smiling as he shoveled. “How’s it going?” They asked.

“Great!” the boy enthused.

“I figure with all this manure, there’s gotta be a pony in here somewhere.”

This is an old story. I often find that old stories are Sufi stories, teaching vehicles of the Islamic mystics. But I am not sure about its origins.

It is usually told as the optimist-pessimist contrast. “Isn’t it much better to go through life with a positive orientation. Don’t be a ‘Debbie Downer’” (of Saturday Night Live fame).

I first heard the story when I joined Analysis & Design at Gemini Consulting. A&D was Gemini’s turbo-charged sales process for reengineering projects. An A&D was a smaller project sold “at cost” (usually at a 15-20% margin vs. a 60-70% margin for normal projects). The objective as told to the client was to do detailed analysis to diagnose problems and to design a solution – a project design to deliver results.

Of course, Gemini hoped to deliver the results, so the A&D objective was to sell the second project. But it was a client decision point. The client could choose to deliver the results on their own and not hire Gemini for the Results Delivery (RD) project.

Most can see that this process, A&D to RD, is open to abuse and conflicts of interest and I certainly witnessed some of that. But Gemini in its heyday had an 80% conversion rate of A&Ds that sold the larger RD project and Gemini’s clients were by and large happy with their work.

The A&D team was under a lot of pressure. A&D projects were usually eight weeks long. They needed to word hard and fast and find process defects that were costing the company money. The team was usually on-site at 7:00 a.m. and often didn’t leave till 10:00 p.m. Consultants frequently flew out Sunday night and home Friday night. It was a meat grinder that many Geminites avoided.

But A&D had esprit d’corps. They believed that they “fed the firm.” They took pride in their workaholism. (I did mention that I was part of this unit, right?)

So when I heard this story in A&D it was in it’s extremely truncated version, just a piece of the punchline really. . . ”Whatcha doin’?” . . . “Lookin’ for the pony in the barn.” Sometimes analysts just said “lookin’ for the pony.” That communicated “I don’t have time to talk , but I will emerge from all this shit with a smile on my face and a ‘finding’ in my hand.”

Mostly, when I heard the entire story told the “Sunny” character was the hero. Everyone would rather be around the optimist. So I’ve heard the story in leadership workshops and personal growth webinars. The message is always how my sister used to answer questions about her blood type, “B-positive and that’s my attitude in life!”

However, once I heard a process improvement trainer tell this storymto a group of internal process improvement consultants. He let the laughter at Sunny’s pony quest die down and then he said:

“The twins grew up. Dark went into quality control. Sunny became a salesman.”

He then proceeded to conduct a discussion of using everyone’s strengths on an improvement project. Sunnys were good at management presentations and funding requests. Darks were good at seeing unintended consequences of a plan. “Everyone has a role,” he said, and then he showed this Hagar the Horrible comic strip.