# Random Business Outcome Talk By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2024-03-26 A significant number of executives are obsessed with numbers. They closely watch the numbers go up and down. They examine the daily nuances to detect the slightest changes and naively project them forward. While monitoring the numbers can be fruitful in moderation, it often creates more unnecessary anxiety than it is intended to resolve. What one wants to watch is long-term trends. Long-term trends mute randomness and show meaningful progress or lack thereof. Looking at daily figures is entirely too random and uncertain to make any meaningful decisions. Long-term trend-watching requires a profound amount of patience, which is why it is so painful for most executives. However, looking only at long-term trends can be misleading when a systemic pivot occurs. For example, once the Cold War ended, the long-term trends of geopolitics no longer applied. Thus, one must also always be on the lookout for these systemic pivot points. Looking for evidence of systemic pivots requires a profound amount of study and intimate knowledge of the system, processes, rules, and history. Again, this is painful and often intolerable for most executives. So, instead of looking for trends and pivots, executives stare at randomness and uncertainty. If the numbers go up, victory is declared. If the numbers go down, action plans are deployed to change everything. This churn creates a lot to do about nothing. If one wants to see what this looks like without living it, look no further than sports talk radio. Every day, a random team wins or loses, and hosts fill up hours with endless chatter about it. People call in to argue their position about the random outcome and what they think should be done. This continues until the next game is played, and then it is repeated. This is no different from how most organizations and executives operate. However, there is one difference: the radio show typically has no impact on the game, whereas executives constantly change things. #### Related Items [[Work]] [[Organization]] [[Executives]] [[Number Crunching]] [[Randomness]] [[Uncertainty]] [[Sports]]