WTF

Read enough business books and you'll stumble across this golden nugget of wisdom, "aspire to be the dumbest person in the room." That is hardly a difficult task when planners/strategists/Chief Experiential Innovation Officers put up slides like the one pictured above.

Can somebody please explain this to me?

There are six arrows, four ovals and a gay three-dimensional, five-layered pyramid that defies all logic and reason. And I haven't even mentioned the two acronyms, the multicolored type and the ridiculous redundancies.

Isn't Assessment the same as Findings of fact and opinion?
Isn't Analysis the same as Experimental Observations?

Surely there must have been a simpler way of saying what this chart (?) intends to say. Something with one simple circle or a triangle or even a nice parallelogram. I would suggest an alternative, but frankly I don't know what the hell chart intends to say.

I do know that the person who prepared this had something very important in mind. Seriously, look at the carefully drawn light streaks on the left side of the pyramid. That's some impressive shading. Same goes for the strategically-placed ovals that seem to pop off the page. I had no idea that art was part of the current MBA curriculum.

And yet still after laborious assessment and analysis the only insight I have gained is that I am an incurable Luddite.

Perhaps the pundits are correct. The problem with the American economy is that we have become a nation of marketers and information shufflers. We have stopped making things. We don't manufacture anything of any value to anyone, anymore.

Of course, if you needed to document that monumental decline with a snappy pie chart or a trapezoid, well, we could have that to you before noon.