Scottish Saying And Phrases

Piccole certezze e grandi bugie

I'm reading The Black Swan "by Nicholas Taleb Nassini , very famous book. I do not want to draw any conclusions, except that which springs from the words of the author arrogance so direct and conscious to be almost funny. It made me think the paragraph dedicated to "expert problem", which, according to Taleb, is very close to cheaters. Only things that do not move, do not turn in time (for example, satellite photos, chess, astronomy, etc..) May have real experts, and those in some way, should include the they have no future. My work falls clearly in the second type. As I learned from great people with whom I was lucky enough to work, our work must have goals and must show results, tangible and measurable . Without the ability to evaluate what has been done, you can not understand how it is done. According to Taleb, forecasts analyze only factors listed and predictable and, therefore, exclude the possibility of unforeseen events. The weather can not be done because too many factors are too many sources of uncertainty and neglect. is not a bad thing, according to him, but we must take account of this . I agree.

We take a professional my case as an example. I just closed two reports of analysis of the work I've done. In one, I predicted how many items would have gone after "launched" a story, based on my assessment of the strength of the ad and the number of potentially affected media. Then I heard directly from several people who had seen the news, hearing of their opinions and views about, and I have updated the initial number in base these. I've analyzed according to three factors derived from my experience:

• If a person interested in the news that you hear, not necessarily because then publish must abide by the rules that she has not decided .
• When the person answers you, not know that the news will arrive in minutes, hours and days following , which does not depend on you or her.
• You tend to hear things positive and less negative , an "I would say that probably the public, I'll let you know" becomes a "definitely publish it, I swear on my mother," and we all fall down, we are human .

The results? In the various reports I predicted a number of articles variable, say between 35-40. It came 50. Well, we went beyond expectations, do we care? course, but there is also an error of 20% in the weather (and it's not just) , have left many items that I did not anticipate and I'm not leaving others considered "safe." What does this mean? You can give your customers some tangible goals and measurable, others not.

Your customers always ask "how many products will you sell me the most?" and just answer, simply, that is the wrong question . I have to demonstrate that they do my job well. If they produce good prodotti, li venderanno a buoni prezzi, risponderanno prontamente a telefonate e mail, anche loro avranno fatto un buon lavoro. E questo produce, quasi sempre, buoni risultati . Quasi sempre? Certo, non viviamo mica in un mondo perfetto. Meglio è la piccola certezza che la gran bugia diceva   Leonardo da Vinci, ossia uno che ha previsto le macchine del futuro. Senza saperlo.

(photo credits: Flickr, pierre pouliquin )