It is anything but a pleasure to say "I told you so" to people who really should have known better
but when all is said, let opportunity pass them by, gone forever, for no good reason. But for any number of bad reasons: Timidity, unwillingness to leave one's comfort zone and take calculated risks, Lack of imagination, inability to see potential in something new and creative, Ego weakness, inability to acknowledge that someone else may know more or be a better leader, Ideological failure, unwillingness to acknowledge that one's beliefs are flawed, or very flawed, Extreme defensiveness, unexamined or poorly examined psychological problems which can lead ...to irrational decisions, to angry outbursts, to scapegoating, you name it. Conformist values, unwillingness to show backbone against popular opinion of the time, Parochialism, refusal to consider that any other worldview than one's own could possibly ...offer more truth, better ideas, or a superior solution to problems. Read the following as metaphor for what RC.com could have done, could have become, and now must learn to live with missed opportunities of major proportions. Told you so, but you would not listen and had endless excuses or rationalizations for inaction. Whatever was suggested, a steady stem of suggestions with serious potential, just about all of which were ignored. Too bad. Told you so... >From the New Yorker-- This history is a chronicle of missed opportunities, missteps, and lessons learned the hard way. As long ago as 1992, an internal report at the Washington Post urged the mounting of an “electronic product”: “The Post ought to be in the forefront of this.” Early on, the Guardian started a New Media lab, which struck a lot of people as frivolous, Rusbridger writes, because, at the time, “only 3 per cent of households owned a PC and a modem,” a situation not unlike that at the Guardian’s own offices, where “it was rumored that downstairs a bloke called Paul in IT had a Mac connected to the internet.” A 1996 business plan for the Guardian concluded that the priority was print, and the London Times editor Simon Jenkins predicted, “The Internet will strut an hour upon the stage, and then take its place in the ranks of the lesser media.” In 2005, the Post lost a chance at a ten-per-cent investment in Facebook, whose returns, as Abramson points out, would have floated the newspaper for decades. The C.E.O. of the Washington Post Company, Don Graham, and Mark Zuckerberg shook hands over the deal, making a verbal contract, but, when Zuckerberg weaseled out of it to take a better offer, Graham, out of kindness to a young fella just starting out, simply let him walk away. The next year, the Post shrugged off a proposal from two of its star political reporters to start a spinoff Web site; they went on to found Politico. The Times, Abramson writes, declined an early chance to invest in Google -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
