Business Leadership

KPIs and metrics can be useful, don't get me wrong. 

But they can never truly replace knowing your company. 

Which often requires just walking around and being present. 

It's when you leave your desk and go out to see things for yourself, that you're truly able to put all those metrics and business tools in proper perspective. 

That's what I was thinking after reading this 

Media and Trump

I saw a letter from the editor today, regarding the response to a column from Cleveland that made a splash recently, in my opinion because it was so refreshing to have a newspaper state the obvious about Trump.

I am pleased to note that there was, as to he author of the column stated, an 'overwhelming response'.

I also agree with his assessment that 'I have a couple or preliminary thoughts on why people shared this so widely, but I also realized early on that I’m not going to figure it out anytime soon.'

It seems to say something important,that a column like that drew so much attention. But what does it really mean?

I know my own reasons for liking it. It's been hard to follow the news lately because I'm frankly rather sickened by the Trump coverage. If they can't call a spade a spade, why should I care about their opinions on anything else? 

I don't know how they keep finding polls that claim Trump has a chance at the general election. I hesitate to say I know better, since I know polling can help us see past our own bubble and get at a better estimate of public opinion, and perhaps it's my own biases that make me think they're wrong.

But a response to the column like that makes me think that I'm right, and that there's something all those polls and pundits are missing. (Or deliberately pretending isn't there, if I want to listen to the more conspiracy minded side of me. How many rich fools keep stepping up to enable Trump, after all? Sometimes it really does seem like a bunch of immoral fools with more money than sense favor a guy who has proven himself a terrible leader and really think they can use their wealth to force that oathbreaking piece of shit back into power.)

Framing

Also, I like to remember that story about statistics.  It went something like this. 

If you were told a medical procedure had a 25% chance of killing you,  would you do it?

What about a 75% success rate?

It's the same data, just framed differently. So all those polls about how Trump won 63.9% (so far) of the Republican primary voters?

Also means 36.1% didn't vote for him, even though he's a former president with a lock on the party.

But sure, continue acting like that oathbreaking disaster is just another candidate. Whatever.  I don't like saying it's impossible for anything to change my mind on how to vote,  but there would have be something on the level of the crap Trump has already done for me to reconsider. 

Ain't That the Truth

From here:

We aren’t asking the Times’s news side to “crusade for change.” We’re not asking it to abandon independence as a “peacetime luxury.” We’re asking the Times to recognize that it isn’t living up to its own standards of truth-telling and independence when it obfuscates the stakes of the 2024 election, covers up for Trump’s derangement, and goes out of its way to make Biden look weak.

I pretty much haven't been posting because there's not really anything new to say.

It's a disgrace that Trump is the main contender for the Republican nomination. At this point,  it's not even just him. He's become a litmus test for how far the rot has grown, and it's disgustingly obvious that the answer is 'pretty far'.