Source: flickr
Dear Diary,
A conversation in the hotel lobby…
Woman – tall, thin, attractive:
“Hey, you must be a writer. You look like a writer.”
Your editor, hunched over his laptop writing…
“Good guess.”
Woman, putting her arm around his shoulders…
“I’m Rebecca. What’s your name?”
“Bill…”
“What are you writing about?”
“A subject so boring I wanna slit my wrists every day.”
“What’s that?”
“Economics.”
“Oh…”
“Well, what are you doing?”
“We’re here with a group of Fortune 500 business executives. We’re consultants. The companies hire us to help their employees find innovative solutions to their problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“All kinds… they each have their own problems… but we don’t get into that. We just show them that whatever their challenge is, the solution is within themselves.”
“How do you do that?”
“Well, they meet here. They each get a backpack. In the backpack are the things they need for problem solving. We give them a map and directions to places all over town where we have meetings.
“The idea is to get them out of their routine. Out of the box. They will have some totally new experiences… and some challenges that have nothing to do with their daily work.
“This may sound funny… but we open their minds to new thoughts. In the summer, for instance, we encourage them to eat a peach and let the juice trickle down their chins…”
“I don’t know if I would dare to eat a peach, if you know what I mean…”
“Sounds crazy, I know. But it is the realization that they don’t have to always do everything the way they’re ‘supposed’ to do it… that there are other ways… that is what opens them up to thinking differently and solving their problems.”
“Oh…”
We turned back to our writing… confident that the world still turns… and still finds new and imaginative ways to separate people from their money.
Positive Beta
Now, let us take up the subject of macroeconomics…
