Imagine Pacioli took a different tack.

You remember Pacioli. Italian guy. A friar. Invented modern accounting five centuries ago, give or take a few years. Ring a bell?

We still keep the books the Pacioli way. It’s why, when you buy a computer, you credit cash and debit tangible assets but when you train an employee you credit cash and debit training expenses.

Computers appear on the balance sheet. Employees don’t. Their skills, knowledge, judgment, loyalty and drive don’t appear as balance sheet assets.

Imagine they did

The problem with managing to the numbers is that it doesn’t work. Far too many of those who think having an equity stake in a business qualifies them to run it, is that they think it does.

They are, in a word, naïfs, and in another word, arrogant. Bad combination.

Understanding that the plural of anecdote isn’t data, here nonetheless is an example, provided by a subscriber who understandably needs the details obscured: