Yesterday there was a provincial election here where the scenario was was portrayed by the media and various pollsters that the party in power is going to get the boot with the second strongest party becoming the new leaders. For months everyone predicted that it was going to swing this way. However, as it turned out in the actual votes yesterday the party that was expected to lose actually won in a big way. This created a lot of questions as to what the heck happened and how so many people got it wrong.

One of the main points was how the party that won used negative ads whereas the other party tried to stay with the positive route. Based on the results people were then saying if you really want to get ahead then showing the negative side of your competition is a lot more effective than trying to be the good guy.

I was really thinking about that as this is one of those things you would say that is a horrible thing to do and will make you look worst in the long-run. However, so many times like in these cases it’s the negative stuff that sticks into people’s head. It’s almost like saying if you don’t take some kind of jab at the other person in that fashion that you are more likely to lose.

Probably the biggest topic about of this was how everyone relied on companies that polled the public in regards to who they would vote for as if their results were definite. This resulted in one party scrambling as the underdog and the other side feeling comfortable about its position. In fact, it seemed like one party was so confident that they won they went all out in getting like a victory video all edited in preparation for the victory.

Kind of embarrassing and risky to simply rely on what other people assume is going to happen based on selective polling huh? Thinking of all the times where even businesses rely and make decisions based on these kinds of information. I suppose at the end of the day you can listen to all the experts in the world. But in the end anything can happen and opinions are just that for the most part and you need to be prepared for anything.

I was reading a situation today where two organizations were competing in the same field. So like most things they have to do the leg work in order to get awareness for their services and at the same time making it profitable. The interesting thing was that one organization all of a sudden was getting some extra push from a bigger company due to knowing people on the inside while offering “incentives”and so it gave them a boost just based on that alone. That then created a debate where people were saying they respected the other organization more as they were still trying to earn their spot in the industry by being the best service provider. However, others were saying that respect was useless as the bottom line is the other organization is getting results with the way they are doing it.

That’s interesting to think about too as many times you often get caught up in a situation where it’s either you do what seems to be the best way to maintain your character and standards in hopes that it translates to success out of respect as someone will recognize it or you simply do what works. It’s almost like the debate of whether the nice or bad guy finishes last. Do you personally care if at the end of the day say no one respects your methods on how you got to the top as long as you got there for example?

Even simple things like that is usually contradicting I think such as a person saying you should always cater to what people are telling you and at the same time the same person could be saying you shouldn’t care what others think. I suppose too it comes down to how bad you want something huh?

Today I was told of an interesting situation as there was a company that has partnered up a lot of people in an effort to help promote its services. Of course, people would get compensated for their efforts based on results. However, while everyone was doing things such as creating sites to promote the services the company itself was advertising only certain people. Hence, they got more exposure that essentially increased their presence to get more customers. This of course made people say how that isn’t right as they shouldn’t be favoring anyone.

You pretty much saw the typical reactions such as some people just outright quitting or those that were arguing to no end in hopes the company would change. This is kind of interesting too as if you think about it everyone is kind of like an independent contractor. With that in mind if you think the company is treating you unfairly you could simply direct your energy elsewhere. For example, promoting different products.

I was trying to research exactly why the business was promoting only certain people as maybe it had to do with the fact that they were the most productive and so hence they earned it. It turned out to not be as obvious though. Essentially, the people that they left out for the most part were people who were very vocal in the sense that when they have an opinion they express it. At the same time, if there is something wrong with the product they won’t sell it like a snake oil salesmen. So in the company’s mind these people are not very good to have regardless of the numbers they bring in.

That’s kind of tricky I say as many times these vocal people are the ones that are good at innovating and thinking outside of the box too. So it could be the opposite too where if you only have people who follow directions then it’s like you will never be able to innovate. Guess in that scenario it is more about have the strong leader that can guide everyone to focus on the same goal despite their differences.

I am always surprised when I hear this as today people were telling me how their friends make so much money to the point that they have no idea what to do with it and so they simply blow it in a casino. The funny thing is that the topic came up because people were trying to come up with a fair rate to bill them for a service and the response was that the figure was too cheap since these are people that easily blow thousands of dollars on trivial things each day.

I have always wondered myself where if you are truly bored and have no idea what to spend your money on isn’t it more fun and potentially rewarding to just say randomly go to a site like Kickstarter and start investing on some projects to see how they go? Unless you are trying to train yourself to be like the next poker champion I think this would be a good way too to keep yourself in the loop in terms of the things that people are trying nowadays as it may even give yourself some ideas on things to to do and create.

I was watching this clip where a person in an effort to try to educate others about his line of work in broadcasting online simply published all these statistics where from there he broke it down to demonstrate how doing certain things either made his business grow or shrink. For example, doing certain events on specific time and dates generated different results. So therefore the most obvious answer would be that those numbers simply tell you that there is a larger audience base during those times such as the majority of people getting off work.

However, that raised up some interesting debate points such as another person placed in a comment that it was more about the person himself as it seemed like he was less enthusiastic and energetic during the daytime when it came to his work. Therefore, the observer’s take on those numbers was that the audience number wasn’t as big simply because his energy and enthusiasm isn’t as big. Another person then tried to bring up a completely different point on how he talks about different subject matters and so there is probably a bigger audience for the things he talks about during the busier times.

It just went on and on and for the most part it’s interesting as I’m sure everyone who is involved in any kind of business or organization of some sort relies on these types of numbers to tell them stories on what is going on and what they can do about it. I think like with that example that is why too it can often be good to get a second opinion when it comes to reading data like these as it is so easy for you to focus on one side of the story whereas others can see something completely different yet relevant.