Read this early this morning on
CNA which BCG had exclusively shared with them. Interesting given my training and background. Spent some time toying with it as shown in the A, B and C. Told myself this is the usual approach fund managers typically present their results to retail investors too. You can tell any story you desire as long as you choose the right starting point. Don't use actual numbers but create an index. But I tell myself this chart looks fair but my sense tell me I am off. Will look at it again later when I have time.
I left it at
Point A: people were unhappy (were they? as this is history now)
Point B: Happy but have forgotten point A. Also kept quiet.
Point C: Happening now. People are grumbling.
Now in the afternoon I test the results wearing different hats and I am not happy. I imagine our young policy makers interning with these consulting firms when they are not in business but government. I imagine technocratic ministers who has forgotten that they are also at the same time political leaders and style themselves as managers and business leaders. I recall the meaninglessness of the CPI for far too many people and how some go to MPS etc, for assistance.
I remember how foreign publications praise our government as being run like business. The whole country is in business.
Truth is the whole country must be in business and MORE, MUCH MORE!
I am a lazy bogger and I like to insert the important point by a HBS doyen which the BCG types go to learn from: Clayton Christensen.
Singapore is making a tragic mistake to think too much in business terms to the exclusion of anything else. Truth is given our position we ought to think even more businesslike together with the social and political much more than now.
See Christensen, which I had made my children watch sometime back.
