Reference Year

I was listening to Joe Scarborough explaining our current economic situation. He has said repeatedly that our situation comes from choices that were made in the ’70’s, shaping subsequent choices that control what we can do today.

In The Direct Economy, I’m showing how our current situation is changing our optimal organization for getting things done.

Yet I keep seeing previous patterns in new opportunities. They don’t turn out to be real, but they remind me vividly of previous successful opportunities. It’s a businessman extolling the vanished organizational pyramid or an amputee feeling phantom pain. It was there once, and I wish it still was.

My reference year was 1995. That was the time I would go back to, when I last had the key. There has been a further fifteen years of the economy sliding out of whack, and now we have to admit to a new reality.

I’m luckier than most. I got one “do-over” from a previous job and nailed off in succession the four largest sales in a global company’s history. But I never expected it, and it was the only time I have ever gone back to a previous employer.