Archive for category Bacal's Laws

Bacal’s Law of Consulting

Posted by Robert Bacal in Bacal's Laws, Training and Consulting Business on March 1, 2010

You probably don’t know that I’m the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Consulting, which is now out of print. I’m still interested in the consulting business, and recently came across a conversation with a “consultant” stating that organizations resist change because of fear, and a few other generalizations that suggested HE knew organization’s [...]

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Bacal’s Law of Meaningless Utterances #2: Fortune Cookie Talk

Posted by Robert Bacal in Bacal's Laws on February 7, 2010

Fortune cookie talk involves a phrase which a) sounds a lot like the generic sayings one gets from opening a fortune cookie (no insult to the cookies intended) ; b) sounds profound (and isn’t), and c) actually means nothing if you think about it for a minute.
Fortune cookie talk is common with new agers, the [...]

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Bacal’s Law of Multicausation

Posted by Robert Bacal in Bacal's Laws, Managing and Organizations, Training and Consulting Business on May 4, 2009

For any phenomenon there will be a multitude of factors that caused the phenomenon. Therefore, any attempt to explain that phenomenon by invoking a single variable will always be wrong, and worse, misleading.
This is an exceedingly important element. We constantly look to change something by altering a single variable, then end up wondering why the [...]

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Bacal’s Law: The only people who can be fooled by statistics…

Posted by Robert Bacal in Bacal's Laws on May 4, 2009

…are people who are ignorant about statistics.
There’s an old saw that goes: There are lies, damn lies and statistics, implying that statistics can be manipulated to “prove anything”. Not true.
The only people who can be fooled by statistical manipulation are those that know nothing about statistics and/or research. If you possess the knowledge, then you [...]

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Bacal’s Laws: From 20 Feet Away Everyone Seems Normal

Posted by Robert Bacal in Advice For Trainers, Bacal's Laws, Training Wisdom or Training Foolishness, Training and Consulting Business on April 11, 2009

This is a deceptively simple concept that affects much of our lives. It explains that from a distance, or with people we don’t know well (and we may not know many people well) everyone seems psychologically intact, or “normal”.
Until you know people well, they will not tend to display their abnormalities, or neuroses.

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