In March 2007, Circuit City came up with a plan to confront softening sales and competition from online and offline retailers: Fire the most talented, experienced employees.

Of course, those workers were the retail chain’s single most important point of difference from the legion of Internet retailers and general merchandisers, but in a single stroke, Philip J. Schoonover, the chief executive of Circuit City, wiped out that future.

As a pal of mine used to say when I described a particularly boneheaded course of action I had pursued, “How’d that work out for you, buddy?”

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Not that long ago, I needed some advice on the book business and thought to ask my friend Buzz Bissinger, the author of “Friday Night Lights” and “A Prayer for the City.” The only sticking point was, we’d never met.

Although he used to be a reporter, we are not what I would call peers. He wrote one of the greatest sports books ever, and oh, one of the best books about city government ever. “Friday Night Lights” became a movie and then a television series, and apart from me being a hopeless fanboy of the show, we have nothing in common.

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