Why don’t people just call me? I’ll never understand.
I wonder that quite often when something that would have been evident to a blindman wearing a blindfold is presented as something revelatory or epiphanic. The latest case in point is a piece from LinkedIn news called, “When office brainstorms go bust”. Here’s the gist:
It turns out that solitude — not unstructured group brainstorming — is often the best starting point for big ideas. Experts tell The Wall Street Journal that the pitfalls of office life, which can include “blabbermouths with mediocre suggestions and introverts with brilliant ones that they keep to themselves,” can impede deep thinking.
What? What experts?! Who are these people? If they were really experts, they would have known the truth in those two sentences — even before the concept of the open office crashed and burned — more than five years ago — because people couldn’t hear themselves think.
Let’s Review
Speaking of thinking, Henry Ford said, “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.” Setting aside the fact that the company he founded has apparently forgotten what he said, we might be in better shape if more people tried it.
The list, of course, is inexhaustible, but here are just three cases of unintended consequences that could have been prevented if someone — anyone — had looked before they leaped or called and asked me if what was about to happen was a good idea:
- People are now shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, that acres of solar panels have incinerated countless birds, killed other wildlife, and disrupted the ecosystems in which that life was trying to live in the wild. It could have been as easy as this:
Caller: OB, should we do this shit?
Me: Do you have a market for dead birds? If not, don’t do it.
- People are astonished, ASTONISHED, I tell you, to learn electric vehicles are worse for the planet they think they need to save and the people attempting to live on it than driving vehicles with internal combustion engines. It could have been as easy as this:
Caller: OB, should I buy an electric vehicle?
Me: Do you have a conscience or the ability to see beyond the end of your snoot? If so, don’t do it.
- People are flabbergasted, FLABBERGASTED, I tell you, to find out the so-called Inflation Reduction Act worsened inflation, increased the national debt, and included includes $80 billion to hire 87,000 IRS agents. That should never have happened, and it could have been as easy as this:
Caller: OB, should we support the Inflation Reduction Act?
Me: Do you need anymore government watchdogs restricting your liberty and taking more of your money? Do you want to live in a third-world country that used to be a thriving federal republic? If not, vote the dipshits who passed that debt-bomb out of office as soon as possible.
Given the fact that the list of predictable but overlooked and unintended consequences is all but endless, I’ll probably have to install a phone bank. Or maybe I can catalogue and index the things that precipitate predictable but overlooked and unintended consequences by category and record responses for each one. Then I won’t have to actually take each call as it comes in.
But while I’m working out the details, if you see something that seems to have better than even odds of going sideways, call me before you go for it.
The face you save may be your own.
