One thing I learned the other day is to never believe the internal corporate newsletters

For most execs/people, there's a big difference between what people will say in a meeting and what they will write down. They feel the permanance of the writing or recording.

When narratives fail, to casual observers the failure seems sudden and out of the blue, but there are usually unmistakable signs of "narrative breakdown" that often become obvious to most observers only in hindsight. One of the most dramatic stories of a "failed narrative" we have ever read comes from Barton Biggs, in his book "Wealth, War and Wisdom": >> "...the Japanese official battle reports and the Japanese press reported the Battle of the Coral Sea as a great triumph, and Midway was portrayed as a victory, not a defeat, although some loss of aircraft and ships were admitted. Although casualties must have been noted and grieved, Japanese society at the time was so united behind the war policy and believed so totally in the invincibility of the Japanese military, that defeat and economic failure were virtually inconceivable. It would have been unpatriotic to sell stocks..." >> "Not e…

" the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than one-hundred-and-forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. " - https://www.george-orwell.org/1984/ Centralised rule, surveillance, privileging the…