{"id":12184,"date":"2011-01-04T11:30:57","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T10:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=2712"},"modified":"2011-01-04T11:30:57","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T10:30:57","slug":"ignoring-facts-and-hoping-for-a-miracle-cure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/ignoring-facts-and-hoping-for-a-miracle-cure.html","title":{"rendered":"Ignoring Facts and Hoping for a Miracle Cure"},"content":{"rendered":"

PowerBalance<\/a>, provider of trendy bracelets<\/a> that are \u201cdesigned to work with your body\u2019s natural energy field\u201d, have admitted<\/a> that there\u2019s \u201cno credible scientific evidence that supports [their] claims and therefore [they] engaged in misleading conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duh!<\/p>\n

Evolution has apparently hard-wired us to LIKE superstition. We don\u2019t want to live in a world without magic cures and horoscopes that guide our destiny.\u00a0And it clearly applies to the business world, too. What is each trendy business fad but a \u201cPowerBalance\u201d promise of painless performance gains?<\/p>\n

We all know that good business is a painful process of getting lots of little things right, day after day \u2013 but when it works (and when it doesn\u2019t), we love simplifying that complexity and declaring that some aspect of it was \u201ctruly pivotal\u201d and the rest didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

Last year, I participated in a very successful customer meeting. It had been arranged by a very talented sales team, which had built a great relationship over the years, by delivering on promises and understanding the business. They were planning to demonstrate some business intelligence software running on an iPad to a large meeting of the customer\u2019s senior employees \u2013 who had just received a talk from their CFO outlining the importance of better access to information to the performance of the organization. At the last minute, I was asked to help out with some of the presentation. The short, lively demonstration held people\u2019s attention, and iPads were handed out (temporarily!) to attendees to try out the software themselves during the break after the session.<\/p>\n

It was clear that this was the kind of event that should be repeated elsewhere. But as news spread of the event, the details were ruthlessly simplified \u2013 all mention of executive sponsorship, the great relationship, the seniority of the group being addressed, and the clear customer recognition of the need vanished, and all the success was ascribed to \u201cthe iPad demo\u201d. Senior executives and marketing people rushed to arrange customer meetings elsewhere, and I was frequently called on to \u201cdo the same demo\u201d \u2013 but to very different audiences, in very different circumstances.<\/p>\n

When I attempted to explain the context, and talk about what else was needed for success, I had exactly the same impression I get when I try to point out to people that miracle cures and superstitions are unlikely to work \u2013 people didn\u2019t really want to know. Because it\u2019s hard. Because we have other things to do. Because it really would be much easier if we didn\u2019t have to do those things, and so we would rather ignore them.<\/p>\n

Conclusion: fact-based decision making isn\u2019t just about having facts in the first place \u2013 it\u2019s about not deliberately ignoring the facts you do have, while hoping for a miracle cure!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PowerBalance, provider of trendy bracelets that are \u201cdesigned to work with your body\u2019s natural energy field\u201d, have admitted that there\u2019s \u201cno credible scientific evidence that supports [their] claims and therefore [they] engaged in misleading conduct.\u201d Duh! Evolution has apparently hard-wired us to LIKE superstition. We don\u2019t want to live in a world without magic cures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[160,204,482,635],"class_list":["post-12184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bi-briefs","tag-bi","tag-business-intelligence","tag-facts","tag-ipad"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3aw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}