I Write About Reality--And I Want to Share It!
One of the burdens you accept when you decide to begin writing about what’s on your mind is criticism. That’s because it’s all but a statistical certainty that 100% of the population—and even 100% of your readers—won’t agree with everything you write.
I’ve also been asked lately why I write about things like economics and politics, while my company’s focus is performance excellence. The reason there is simple, but even simple answers can have more than one part to them. The first part of the answer is that I don’t see politics and economics all that differently than business and what I write about are my conclusions based on DATA driven analysis. The second part of the answer is even simpler than that; these topics interest me. I spend a lot of time studying them and figure my investment in time and analysis isn’t really worth much if I don’t share it. In fact, to quote a friend who recently published a terrific book, “It’s not reality unless it’s shared.” I write about reality—and I want to share it.
To recap some of what I’ve written about in the past.
January 2nd, 2008: I said the recession had started. In June the economists were still talking about how we had skirted one. November 26th, 2008: I said the depression had started. The economists are still denying it, but just yesterday, Paul Volker, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors did call it a GREAT Recession (they’re “easing” us into it). On December 10th, I wrote of the need to let at least one of the big three automakers go bankrupt. How much money will have been wasted delaying that inevitable conclusion? The point is that the data leading to all of these conclusions is fairly straight forward—and if we’d listen to the data, instead of emotions and politicians, we might actually solve problems a little faster. So I will continue to write about a range of topics broader than the day to day focus, because as President Obama just demonstrated by appointing both a Chief Performance Officer and a Chief Technology Officer to focus on technology innovation, the principles that we espouse here at BMGI apply to just about anything—and everything.




