Jobs, inflation, and economic growth data are announce each month. Corporate financials are reported every quarter. But first, analysts project their expectations well ill advance. When results come in better than expectations they are attributed to unexpected circumstances. When they come in below expectations blame is accredited to management blunders. On the rare occasion results and expectations are nearly equal, all the kudos go to the perspicuity of analysts. It’s always someone else who fails, never the analysts.
Truth be told, analyst expectations are little more, and probably much less, than SWAG (scientific wild ass guesses). I’m reminded of several demonstrations used by W. Edwards Deming many decades ago that revealed the foolishness of rewarding success and punishing failure for events over which an agent’s actions have little effect on outcome..
It isn’t that corporate decisions and government policies are not important, they are. But the best they can do is influence modest changes in the flow of events over which they have little real control. Canny observations may spot opportunities others fail to see, but they don’t create the opportunities. A certain ruthlessness can out maneuver others to advantage, but only for a moment, and that based on good luck, in other words, on favorable random outcomes. Deming’s point was that people, leaders in particular, are often distracted by trying to control random outcomes when they should be doing something else. What else?
They should be scanning the environment’s horizon with unprejudiced eyes to spot emerging trends that will change the course of the usual way of things. The old saying that basing future actions on historic trends is not destiny should be reworded to say that it is never destiny. What drives fundamental changes in the direction of society is the discernment of previously unasked questions that must now be asked. Here are a few rough examples to suggest the general idea.
Nineteenth century robber barons seized opportunities to build industrial empires, but they never asked how their mistreatment of employees and customers would redirect trends undermining their own successes. Prime Minister Chamberlain knew how European politics always worked but never asked how the emerging wave of fascism would turn it upside down. Post war America believed a new, permanent, prosperous equilibrium had been established, but never asked how the disadvantaged and disenfranchised would react to being left out. It would be wrong to blame leaders for everything. The general public is exceedingly stubborn in its desire to keep things the way they used to be while denying the obvious changes and dangers lying ahead in plain sight. It’s what enables movements such as fascism and MAGAism to gain momentum. Fear of losing what little they have moves some people, sometimes whole nations, to give authority into the hands of a leader who promises to keep them safe, even give them a new paradise. It never works. The people always suffer loss.
What is the responsible way forward? There are guiding principles that point the way without giving specific directions. Those are for us to work out as best we can. Perhaps most important has been pointed out by Rowan Williams when he said there is no such thing as “dead material.” All creation is alive in its own way in the creating and sustaining presence of God who is both imminent and transcendent at the same time. For Christians it means creation and creatures are in some sense sacred, and we, as humans, are accountable for our stewardship of them. The Word of God incarnate in Christ Jesus declares that every person, no matter who or where, is beloved of God, none more than another. Christians are compelled by God to declare that truth, live into it, and do what they can as they are able to influence corporate decisions and public policies toward godly justice for all. It’s that simple but not easy.
Jesus said the fullness of life hangs on two basic commandments: love God fully and without reservation; love others no matter who they are. How? He said to love others as he loves us, and the gospel narratives describe what that means if we allow the Spirit to speak through them into our minds and hearts. Is that just his opinion? No. It is from God’s mouth to our ears, not an opinion but plain black and white eternal truth. In other words, it is the answer to the question, what is God’s plan for us? It is by this truth that we are more able to make plans and navigate random contingencies with fewer blunders. An old saying says that fortune favors the prepared mind and following in the way of Jesus is the way of a prepared mind.
Freeman Dyson once wrote in a discussion of Tolstoy’s War and Peace that Napoleon lost because he thought he was in control of events whereas the Russian general Kutuzov knew he wasn’t in control and so made fewer mistakes. I like the feel of that.