In Jessica Treadway’s novel Lacy Eye, a young girl, upon receiving a diagnosis of a lazy eye, hears instead the words “lacy eye,” a much prettier sounding condition. The error comes to symbolize the novel’s major theme: our sometime preference not for the truth but for what we’d rather be true.
Though easy to state but difficult to adopt, a fundamental commitment of all successful producers must be to understand the facts before them, because deciding what should be done necessarily starts with apprehending what can be done. For example, Who is available to hire and what are their capabilities ― current and potential? What materials to acquire, and their properties? What tools and their outputs? And, How can all be organized to produce something buyers will want and can afford, given the available options?
Rarely can such questions be answered or acted upon with certainty. How much more misleading do they become if not honestly pursued? “Ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect,” said Francis Bacon, in his Novum Organum.
Or to state the point more positively, as did General Electric CEO Jack Welch: “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.”
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