[Seth Godin]: No, this is a post about how bad ideas stick around forever.
The reason is simple: in most organizations, you don’t get in trouble for embracing the status quo.
More than a hundred years ago, Kaiser
Wilhelm wanted to get rid of his enemies in the German government. He
noticed that they were all over 65. So he decreed that this was the
official retirement age, and it still is.
I read this just after talking with a colleague, business development
director of a firm that provides brilliant financial analysis of
sustainability-focused business initiatives, commiserating about how
rarely business decisions seem to be made on the basis of rational
analysis. Some would say that ‘rationale analysis’ is more commonly
used to block inititatives and innovation, and that the best business
decisions are made more by gut, with the analytics brought in after the
fact, to justify decisions already made. Seth would probably agree.
