Nostradamus

IN THE May 2003 edition of this magazine I predicted some mega deals would begin to occur. I also predicted that the number of printing companies would continue to shrink and that we would have less than 30,000 by 2006.

A reader, who will remain nameless, e-mailed me a few days ago and asked if there was going to be a follow-up column reporting on how well I did with my prophesies.

Hey! I am not a modern day Nostradamus. I’m just a mere mortal human being with, maybe, a tad more talent than the rest of you.

I am gonna stop for a minute and

Managing means predicting. When we say, "Until you measure you can't control," we're really saying, "If we don't record the past we can't predict what's going to happen." If we haven't kept track of what we've spent for wages, salaries and social benefits in the past, we can't project those expenses for the future. If we haven't accounted for production time, we can't predict delivery dates. The better we predict, the better we can manage. From ancient times we've sought to predict what will happen. We've consulted an Oracle at Delphi, read Nostradamus, looked at the stars, listened to politicians, weather forecasters