The echoes of their punditry are everywhere. The venerable guru of gurus graced magazine covers this year at the age of 91. We listen to their wisdom in our conference halls. We sit enthralled in the privacy of our own corporate boardrooms. We business folk eat this stuff up, and it's no mystery why.
Business is scary.
It's always been scary, but these days it's scarier than ever. Between dotcoms and Dilbert, managers are being downsized, rightsized, transferred and transported out of their sinecures. At the same time, there are evermore young turks out there ready to snatch our jobs. So we shell out fortunes to go to conferences to bring these pundits to our organizations for a little personal, customized, hands-on attention. And the bigger we are the more we spend.