The football season is back. So is the federal budget debacle after a digression.
We all get to play Fantasy Football whether we like it or not.
The fantasy that a well-educated and skilled manager and his staff can invent inside a financial spreadsheet is truly a terrible thing.
I'm a manager. I'm a business person. I've done it myself and done it to myself more than once. In the past, I've most certainly had it done to me by others with painful financial results.
All US taxpayers have had it done to us in spades over the last few decades.
This is getting worse not better.
The explanation for this madness is no great mystery.
It is simple really…
Intent is Not Fact
The Illusion of Predictive Fact
In the coming few months as we get proposed budgets, sequesters, and hear all the talk about it. We're all going to get buried in a lot more of this oft aberrant human behavior.
That is - employing technology tools, fraudulent pseudo-science, and bad quantitative analysis to self-justify more improper and, at times, immoral behavior.
Maybe the four essential words, “Thou shalt not steal” come to mind?
Good decision making process requires us to do the predictive thing. The neuroscientist will explain to you this is hard wired into the human brain. Our physical daily survival depends on such heuristic skill.
It is, however, a very bad idea to believe the fruits of that effort have the same factual value as the past results and events themselves.
We must ask ourselves,
“Do they talk about their intent as though it were a fact?”
A Great Old Joke Comes to Mind
A politician, a lawyer and a banker walk into a bar.
They sit down together.
The bartender pours them all a top shelf drink.
“The drink’s on me”, he says.
They ask, "Why did you do that?"
The bartender says,
"I know you all. It's cheaper than the alternative..."