Let’s start the year with a big scary dose of gloom and doom! That was the approach of a national media organization with their January 2nd leading headline story: “If you thought 2022 was bad, wait until you see what 2023 has in store for the economy.” It featured a photo of a despondent man […]
Read post »Years ago, an elderly couple went to a country fair. The husband was captivated by an animated psychic promising to tell his age and what kind of person he is. He inserted a coin, and the machine sprang to life. The animatronic clairvoyant peered into her crystal ball, mumbled a few words, and pointed to […]
Read post »An interview in this month’s Harvard Business Review looked at yet more research showing the folly of expert forecasting. “‘Experts’ Who Beat the Odds Are Probably Just Lucky” discusses a study by Warwick Business School’s Jerker Denrell who worked with Christina Fang of the Stern School of Business. They analyzed years of experts’ quarterly forecasts […]
Read post »“I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for 50 years. Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions.” – Wilbur Wright (1867-1912), U.S. inventor “Economists, in particular, are treated with the reverence the ancient Greeks gave the Oracle of Delphi. But unlike the notoriously […]
Read post »We made it through yet another doomsday prediction! The world did not end on December 21 as some felt the Mayan calendar predicted. Around the world interest in survival pods, underground bunkers, and one-way tickets to “apocalypse safe havens” soared as D-Day approached. You should be able to pick up a Mayan calendar at half […]
Read post »My last post brought a few insights and research on dealing with uncertainty. The post before that was built around Dan Gardner’s excellent new book, Future Babble. It drew parallels with one of his key themes (expert hedgehogs and foxes) by discussing management hedgehogs and leadership foxes. A key difference from management hedgehog’s rigid planning […]
Read post »In Dan Gardner’s fascinating new book, Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway, he cites the research of Professor Philip Tetlock, in dividing the expert forecasters he studied into hedgehogs and foxes. This comes from an essay entitled, “The Hedgehog and the Fox” by political philosopher Isaiah Berlin. The […]
Read post »Once again we face a fresh New Year with countless possibilities stretching out far beyond the horizon. Will this year be filled with triumphs or tragedies? What changes lay ahead? Is the uncertainty daunting or exciting? Are we creating a new earth or witnessing the end of history? Will this be the year of “The […]
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