I was in a meeting the other day when someone said they had something that would “Accelerate Transformational Efficiencies.” I’m pretty sure the capitals were his, for emphasis, rather than mine. Naturally I was intrigued and looked up, asking “How so?”
In his hand was a slide rule which he held up. This revolutionary gadget would, he said, achieve this said acceleration of transformational efficiencies. All by itself. It would, he went on, allow government entities to achieve the strenuous cost save targets that they had been set – and, better still, it would (of course), by virtue of its accelerating effect one assumes, allow those savings to be brought forward.
Ok, so it wasn’t a slide rule in his hand. But the rest of the conversation is pretty much verbatim. It wasn’t that far off a slide rule but it wasn’t quite an electric adding machine.
Having seen the gadget and experimented with it, I am entirely confident that I wasn’t looking at the next increment in the computer revolution. I’ve encouraged him to lead his product sales with something a little more realistic.
