Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

“You’re neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You’re right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right – and that’s the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don’t have to worry about anybody else.”

The current information climate is so fraught with agendas, innuendo and outright lies, that we must make sure that we make decisions based on facts and nothing else. If we don't do that, we may as well put our potential ideas and directions on a dart board and decide what we do by what we hit.

Here's an example today of that reality. The New England Journal of Medicine has recently come out with a study that blasts the despicable fantasy numbers brought out by the George Soros-backed study published in the medical journal "The Lancet" in 2006.

The Journal report says 151,000 people have died since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, while the study commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and led by the disgraced Les Roberts, just threw out the numbers that 650,000 had died. Les Roberts works at Colombia University. Too bad we have people with this type of character teaching young people. Not only that, they put it out right before the election of 2006 in order to sway voters, which it did.

You can find the faulty and spurious methodology explained in detail at the National Review.

It's one thing to play games like this if you're in the political arena, it's another to do it in business. We can't afford to listen to demagogues and those who make up data when we're making decisions. In order to protect ourselves, we must understand the existing climate in the world, and that climate is rank with false information thrown around in attempt to influence people to do things based on that information. Facts don't matter here, but getting their agenda believed does.

The reason this is happening in a number of categories is because there's a lot of money and power at stake, and the games are played in order to gain both. We can't be naive and unaware about this: it's real.

Listen to what Warren Buffett admonishes in the quote at the beginning of the post. We must know that we know that the data we receive are accurate ... that they're in reality facts.

There are many people out there that simply aren't afraid to use false statistics to get there way. We need to reference and cross reference everything. The past can be a guide as to how the future will go, in the sense of how things have been done, especially as far as it relates to the pace being set. Even with technology, people are still people, and that will never change.

Be cautious when people do the "world is going to end thing" in connection to any area of business and life. I'm not advocating not always having a sense of urgency, but that urgency must be balanced with decisions based on facts, not appeals to the emotions.

If your facts tell you one thing, and you've done due diligence, we'll know then that what we do is based upon what really is, rather than what someone else hopes for.

Just remember in the example above on the number of deaths in Iraq. If people are willing to do that to change the course of politics, they'll also do it to change the course in business.

Another example is the one recently reported by the Federal Reserve in Minneapolis that shows Wal-Mart is a plus to the communities it does business in, by almost every indicator examined. Yet it doesn't bother people with agendas to lie over and over about them being a negative impact. Most of the assertions made about Wal-Mart were found to be untrue, including the myth that they hurt local businesses. Yet people today will quote that and other things as if they were true.

Like I said, if people want to play those games fine, just don't get caught up in taking data at face value. We unfortunately no longer live in a world that we can assume something to be true. More than ever we need to check to ensure things are indeed facts, and use our common sense.

Examine everything with an eye that something could be tainted by those without scruples or integrity. It'll save you a lot of headaches, and possibly even your business and job. The information world is now a dangerous one, we need to act accordingly.

Other Buffett Resources:

Wisdom of Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett, investor

Warren Buffett: The trouble with being a legend

Warren Buffett: 'I told you so'

Company growth

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