If…then…

We challenge logic used to clarify a problem with increasingly less frequency.  This is true in most situations, and it applies across boardrooms and conference rooms at every level.  The worst danger in this mistake is the subsequent chain of events it creates.  For example, "if everybody returns to working in an office, we won't have the same problems with vacancies in commercial real estate."  "If we invest our capital in industrial real estate, then our investment will be safe based on demand for the past two years."  The first statement ignores the true causes for the current vacancies across the Washington, DC commercial real estate market.  The second ignores the long term implications that have to be true for such an statement to be real.  In either case, a quick testing of them should prove they are not true.  Both of these are the result of quick decisions that were never fully analyzed.