I think the people in this country have had enough of experts with organisations from acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The thing that people associate with expertise, authoritativeness, kind of with a capital 'A,' don't correlate very well with who's actually good at making predictions.
Right, but there's expertise and then there's inside information. And I think we have to make a distinction.
My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
You've always got to work with the best if you can, and of course, the best are the best because they're different. They expect certain standards, and they're usually very difficult people to work with.
So often corporate America, business America, are the worst communicators, because all they understand are facts, and they cannot tell a story. They know how to explain their quarterly results, but they don't know how to explain what they mean.
My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
There are domains in which expertise is not possible. Stock picking is a good example. And in long-term political strategic forecasting, it's been shown that experts are just not better than a dice-throwing monkey.
The single hardest part of leading any organization is knowing what is going on. There's too much noise in the system, too much complexity: you absolutely depend on people speaking up and raising concerns.
I still remember the first acronym I learned, BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front. I still try to communicate that way. No reason to dance around getting to the point.