This idea was lifted from an e-mail exchange with Noni Mausa this morning. The following well seasoned joke reminds me of political communications among the people who write the copy for our leaders:

A carpet layer had just finished installing carpet for a lady. He stepped out for a smoke, only to realize he’d lost his cigarettes. He went back in and in the middle of the room, under the carpet, was a bump. “No sense pulling up the entire floor for one pack of smokes,” he said to himself. He got out his hammer and flattened the hump.

As he was cleaning up, the lady came in. “Here,” she said, handing him his pack of cigarettes. “I found them in the hallway.”

“Now,” she said, “If only I could find my parakeet.”

Part of Noni’s note:

What is worrisome is that we don’t always correct our steering as we should, jumping back and forth between data, predictions, steering, more data and comparisons to our predictions.

But the biggest problem isn’t poor execution of good-faith strategies. It is clever execution of bad-faith strategies.