The Most Evil Conspiracy To Ever Be Conspired.

There are two kinds of people in this world.

Those who utterly despise spreadsheets and those who have been flimflammed.

Way back in 1000 BCE, some very smart person invented clay tablets. This was followed by clay post-its, clay leave-behind pitch decks, and of course clay business cards with gold embossed lettering. Then it was all ruined by Janis in Business Affairs who invented the clay spreadsheet.

Initially, spreadsheets had a narrowly defined use - accountants who needed to talk to accountant-adjacent people about money stuff. But then they found their way into boardrooms and offices of people who had no interest in accountancy. And suddenly everyone thought spreadsheets should be used to talk about more than money. They could be used to talk about staffing, projects, utilization, salaries, and prosperity. And the bean counters of the world rejoiced because what they were good at (counting beans) was now the methodology for assessing everything.

Thus began the most ridiculous fiction ever - that all hugely important things are quantifiable. If it mattered you could give it a number and put it on a spreadsheet for everyone to marvel at.  This meant if it wasn’t on the spreadsheet, it didn't really matter and you needn't to worry your pretty little non-bean-counting head about it.

Some commonly held beliefs we know are nutso-bonkers. They are so self-evidently preposterous that they hardly need a chortled rebuttal: the earth is flat, the election was stolen, AI won't take all our jobs and bring about Judgement Day, guns made to kill people don't kill people, mentally unbalanced people with unlimited access to guns designed to kill people do.  But when the secret cabal of world-dominating accountancy started sneaking into meetings they weren’t invited to and told us that everything important was quantifiable. No one even blinked one blink.

So this is where we are, in a world where the only things that matter are things that can be easily measured.

Just think about that. Think about everything in your world that is difficult to measure but has enormous influence, relationships, surprises, hope, experience, memory, virtues, community, trust, support, and yes my cynical beauties, love. The ferocity and persistence of these have an enormous impact on our behavior as consumers, coworkers, and humans living with other humans. And yet they remain unconsidered on our spreadsheets and data feeds because they are so difficult to measure. These are the biggest beans of all, and they go uncounted.

Which is both stunningly inaccurate and miserably inadequate.

I am hugely grateful to each powerful, lovely, and inspiring bean that you horribly gloriously needy and brilliant people have offered me this past year. I counted them all, and am embarrassed by the riches you gave to me.

Thank you,

grant