The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 18 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Management consulting gainshare agreements are a scam
“A game share agreement is a management consulting scam where you claim a certain percentage of the cost savings you identify in year one.”
Sutherland: Shareholder Value Focus Prevents Effective Innovation and Customer Investment
“The shareholder value movement's totally incoherent because over what time frame which shareholder... What are you optimizing for? It's a completely incoherent nonsense, which is very, very friendly to stock market analysts who want a ready supply of quarterly…”
Sutherland: Economics is creatively limiting by reducing motivation to bribes and fines
“The problem of economics isn't only that it's wrong, it's that it's incredibly creatively limiting, because it tends to posit a very one-dimensional view of human motivation, and therefore, if you wish to change human behavior, the only two ways you can do it …”
Sutherland: Shareholder value short-termism creates psychopathic, untrusted businesses
“And I think the problem with the shareholder value movement, by the way, and short term targets in business, is you're creating in businesses with a focus on the short term, you're creating psychopathic businesses, you're creating businesses which consumers in…”
Companies should shift 20% of marketing budgets to top-tier call centers
“Probably 50% of the time I would advise to a client,
Take 10 to 20% of your marketing budget and spend it on upgrading the call center.
Pay the people too much.
Get the best practitioners.
I think it's perfectly legitimate in some organizations there should be…”
Publicly traded companies are incentivized to behave like psychopaths
“PLCs, or companies on the NASDAQ, or the, you know, stock exchange, are incentivized to behave like psychopaths, because they're optimized around short-term transactional value, not long-term relationship building.”
Sutherland: Tech-Driven Management Optimizes for Metrics Distant from Customer Needs
“When you allow tech bros too much power over decision-making, along with their running dog lackeys in kind of management consultancy, You're optimizing for something which may be very, very distant from what your real-world customers really care about.”
Sutherland: Apple made a mistake by cancelling its urban electric car project
“I lost faith in Apple when they cancelled the car. Because I thought you, they had the brand power to create, for places like New York and London, a form of microtransport, which was really, really cool, really, really efficient.”
Sutherland: Publicly Traded Corporations Cannot Do Marketing Well
“With the exception of P&G, Diageo, Unilever, marketing-led companies, I don't think that PLC is, what do you call them in, you know, publicly traded corporations. I don't think they can actually do marketing very well, because the requirement for short-term se…”
Sutherland: Non-Listed Companies Deserve a Trust Mark as They Are More Trustworthy
“We should actually have a kite mark that allows consumers to prefer to buy from companies which aren't listed on some stock exchange somewhere, and hence aren't controlled by the finance function, because they're more trustworthy.”
Sutherland: Tech Vendors Captured Finance Departments With Self-Serving Marketing Metrics
“What has happened is that in marketing, for example, the tech companies, the consulting firms that sell stacks, and I owe a lot of this to a guy called Adel Borky, very interesting, self-taught Libyan marketing writer, former boxer, Anil Borky, and I coined th…”
Sutherland: Gillette damaged its business by insulting its male customer base
“Gillette ran an advertisement. They realized they had to move on, perhaps, from the best a man can get, despite the fact, obviously, that their customer base is overwhelmingly male for fairly obvious reasons. And they produced an ad which I would argue, and ev…”
Sutherland: Jaguar could never win head-to-head against German luxury giants
“Jaguar was always trying to compete head to head with BMW, Mercedes, and Audi. And bluntly put, because of the scale of those entities, it was always going to lose. Because if you're the kind of person who's happy to buy a BMW, an Audi, or a Mercedes, and you'…”
Korean technology and car quality are driven by cultural rivalry with Japan
“The Koreans are going to make fantastic tech and fantastic cars, regardless of the profit motive. Do you know why? To wind up the Japanese. So they've got two motivations, ok? Other people are just trying to make money.”
Sutherland: Accountants, lawyers, and economists hold too much corporate power
“I'm only angry with accountants and lawyers and economists, not because they do what they do, but because they have too much power doing it. And they've achieved a kind of monopoly over decision making, which I don't think they have a reasonable claim to.”
Sutherland: Metropolitan ad agencies fail if they misunderstand 50% of citizens
“It is a serious challenge to advertising agencies. If you genuinely have an advertising agency in a huge metropolitan city, which completely fails to understand 50% of the population of the country which it serves”