(Well, okay, perhaps I made some leaps of logic of my own. For example, the person at GM entrusted to make a $10M decision hopefully lives on the right hand side of the curve – or maybe the Peter Principle is at work and the executives involved really don’t have a grasp of ROI. Who knows.)

I’m seeing a lot more of the opposite, even in the above examples from your post. The right questions are being asked, but by and about the wrong result. Your insurance company DID need to ask someone the question they asked you, but they should have asked someone else, based on your service record. GM should always be asking if they are advertising in the wrong places, but they shouldn’t have asked facebook.  As for the airbag thing, that’s just bad business, no question about it…lol.

There is a fundamental shift in how many businesses rlook at things lately, its not about loyalty, its not about what’s right or wrong, its not about benefit vs weakness, its about the bottom line. Money needs to come in. I get it, I’m no idiot…if you can make money, more power to you. But when you’re already making a dollar off of me, don’t ask me for two.

THE WRONG QUESTIONS are taking over way too much of the corporate the decision-making process: I had a friend forward me a job description from a company looking for a “marketing genius who has scaled companies to $100 million.” Does this person exist? Yes. Are they going to be courted by this particular company? No. Because they’re not out there in the circles that this particular job description was looking for. The Binary Question: “are you a rockstar?” They’re asking the question in a room full of nuns. Answer will be no.

I’ve seen the “check-the-box” approach take over everywhere – and my argument is that people are asking the wrong damn questions.

tl:dr – the world is not black and white, and too many companies are trying to make it be as such.

I’m in a down-with-puffery mood lately. Glad someone else is, too!