This is something Richard Huntington has often talked about. And it's something we often ignore, forget, or both.
Malcolm Gladwell got to the heart of this issue when he answered a question in a GQ interview last year. The question is, in essence, the planner's dilemma:
"If you had to choose, would you rather be interesting or right?"
His reply was brilliant:
“If I were President of the United States, I would rather be right than interesting. If I were a CEO of a company, I would rather be right than interesting. But I am a journalist—what journalist would rather be right than interesting?”
Planners are journalists, yet too often we act like diet CEOs.
I firmly believe in a world of data abundance and processing power, that the curious will win. This, in many ways, is a re-dedication to our past. Bill Bernbach said this back in the the 1950s:
“The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you if you’re not interesting, and you won’t be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.”
Please, be interesting. Not simply right.
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