From Peter Drucker:
"With the coming of the computer... the decision-maker will, in all likelihood, be even further removed from the scene of action. Unless he accepts, as a matter of course, that he had better go out and look at the scene of action, he will be increasingly divorced from reality. All a computer can handle are abstractions. And abstractions can be relied on only if they are constantly checked against the concrete. Otherwise, they are certain to mislead us...
One needs organized information for the feedback. One needs reports and figures. But unless one builds one's feedback around direct exposure to reality - unless one disciplines oneself to go out and look - one condemns oneself to a sterile dogmatism and with it to ineffectiveness."
Drucker was right. So much of decisions today are made based on abstractions - GDP numbers, housing start number (like today), accounting number, GPA, publication numbers. As a result, so much of human productivity now goes into engineering numbers. More so, we are not merely looking at abstractions, but abstractions that are meant to be inflated. Executives now have the heighten responsibility to get out and understand reality beyond the numbers.
