Reading minds is outside our capability.

Running a business is hard. There are many moving parts to contend with, both from the customer’s side and that of the enterprise itself. A knife’s edge of difference enables those parts to work symphonically rather than as a cacophony. The cacophony often prevails. Not for nothing is the practice of good management often characterized as more art than science, especially when “good” is a matter of perspective and bias.

We’re dealing with humans. Most simply want to make a living and provide for those closest to them. For that reason, when studying economics in college long ago, I always found incongruous the assertions of those theorists who tried to reduce human behavior and all its attendant unorthodoxies and irrationality to a series of simultaneous equations. Despite the mathematical elegance, something didn’t fit into such a neat solution. People aren’t abstractions, but I was too young and inexperienced to adequately express my misgivings about the incongruity. Plus, I wanted an A.

Time has added depth, and depth comes from time-tested experience. Experience, and hitting many walls, reveals a range of motivations.

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