Forecasts

Last missive, Open or Closed, accidentally used Election Day in the United States as a lead in to what I really wanted to write about: the impact of doubt versus certainly. If you haven’t read it or don’t remember it, go back and read Open or Closed before reading further.

Here we are, exactly a week since the election. I find myself again starting off with thoughts about the election. By now the entire world knows that all the pollsters and pundits should be out looking for work. A zillion polls and pseudo intellectual discourses on exactly what was going to happen and why…and none of them were close to the final results. Even on the eve of the election, forecasts for the very next day were embarrassingly inaccurate.

Pollsters have been refining their methodology for years. They have the latest technology slicing and dicing the electorate every way imaginable. There are reams of statistics from past elections to aid them in building their predictive models. They have the best political minds (or so those minds claim) to add a last bit of seasoning to the mix.

And still they were embarrassingly inaccurate.

I’ve heard a number of the pollsters explaining why they were wrong. I suppose they are trying to convince future customers it wasn’t their fault the electorate did what they wanted instead of what was predicted. I wonder if they understand that now that the election is over pretty much no one cares what they say in their defense.

They blew it.

Predicting the future is difficult no matter how much current and historic data you have to feed into your algorithms. Who predicted these were coming: Ebola? The rise of IS in the Middle East? Google or Facebook?

Once they began to develop traction, the difficulty of predicting lessened, lessened but did not disappear or even approach certainty. The whims of the universe are always out there, sometimes with huge effect, sometimes with small effect. Always with some effect.

Yet I run into executives who seem to think their predictions of the future are certain. They act on their predictions without regard for countervailing facts or noticing that as they move forward the world around them in changing. Changing rapidly.

I see projections by people who haven’t bothered to put some worst case/best case parameters around them. Something happens and they are totally unprepared. Totally unprepared is just as bad if business suddenly takes off as if it falls off a cliff. No one knows what to do in either case.

Reminds me of something I read recently: Open or Closed. Doubt leads to conversation, questioning, the search for more and better information, and most importantly, keeping your eyes open and your brain thinking…and preparing for whatever may come. Certainty now, certainty leads to waking up finding your world has changed and you aren’t sure what to do.

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