John Linton .....the more we know we don't know.....a trite adage but nonetheless true.
Many things happen in every business day that require understanding followed by action. Far more things happen in every business day which are completely unknown to even the best informed person that will render the actions and decisions made by even the most competent and well informed 'manager' pointless and perhaps even counter productive. In understanding this scenario the choices become clear that no action should be taken without the understanding that the results of that action should be monitored to determine whether they are producing the expected results within the expected time frames. However, my observations, over the years are that few decision makers I have become acquainted with actually do that.....they are too busy making their next decision to check in enough detail on the ongoing results of their previous decisions.
I am not a subscriber to 'chaos theory' because I don't begin to understand what it is or how I can begin to understand it. Like everything else I don't understand, I am forced to ignore it which is my loss it it does in fact have any applicability to my personal and business life but then there is such a vast array of things I don't understand that one more piece of ignorance cannot make that much difference. I was reminded yesterday that most people I deal with in my business life make little attempt to actually understand very much at all about their daily business activities beyond obtaining the most reward from the least effort for themselves and they will do that based on the least possible information acquisition. They seem to be totally oblivious to the increasingly negative results such an attitude produces over relatively short periods of time. I could understand this scenario if the people who employed it were stupid but that isn't the case - most of the people I have observed are far from stupid.
Perhaps it's the fact that they are far from stupid that allows them to reach modest levels of 'success' in their business lives without having to exercise any rigour in their thinking and 'facts' are simply irrelevant to their desire for the easiest possible personal enrichment? I have no idea but I am surprised in this 'information society' (how I despise such idiocies) at why so many people don't use the more obvious processes available to them to provide them with easily obtained useful information that would allow them to 'enrich themselves' at a faster rate than they accomplish by ignoring them.
Perhaps nothing has changed and the value of information has become debased by the twin assaults of saturation 'news' coverage by TV camera images interpreted for the gullible by people chosen for their looks rather than their knowledge and intellect and that the requirement for the speed of dissemination of "news" to eliminate any analysis before it must be disseminated...... the overwhelming requirement for "news" to be visual rather than interpretive completing the trifecta of the trivialisation of human communication, let alone understanding.(did you ever consider why so much television news time was devoted to such irrelevancies as the recent Haitian, Christchurch and Japanese natural disasters - round the clock going on for days/weeks?).
I observed the results of ephemera over substance yesterday and it's a depressing sight.
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