This evening I was introduced to the writings of Michael Fullan, author of, The Six Secrets of Change Management.  While skimming through the introduction, I came upon the following statement, "the world has become too complex for any theory to have certainty.  There can never be a blueprint or silver bullet."  He next quotes, Robert Rubin, fomer Secretary Treasure as saying, "Once you've internalized the concept that you can't prove anything in absolute terms, life become all the more about odds, chances and trade-offs.  In a world without provable truths..."

So let me propose a silver bullet theory that I believe is an absolute truth that is at odds with the "never" position so eloquently expressed above by Mr. Fullan: "there is no space in which there is no law... and unto every law there are certain bounds also and conditions."

So, let's noodle on this for a few seconds - or perhaps even a decade or a century or two...

First, I'd like to suggest that science and scientific methods help us discover laws that operate upon space even when we do not understand the laws and how they operate.  As an example, the "law of gravity" is something that was undefined by the scientific community for hundreds if not thousands of years - and yet, it has operated on this planet for a very long time.

Or let's consider the "law of inertia" from Sir Isaac Newton: "every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it".  When Newton identified and defined this law, he significantly changed our understanding of the Universe.  However, to be clear - he changed our understanding - he did not change the Universe.

So, let's go back to the silver bullet theory, "there is no space in which there is no law" a statement that is in stark contrast to that proposed by Mr. Fullan, "the world has become too complex for any theory to have certainty."

I sure hope Mr. Fullan knows what he is talking about and can see forward into the next 500 years of scientific discovery.  Never is a very long time... and I suspect that science will discover a new law or two along the way that will help us make sense of the space in which we live and will possibly even simplify some of the apparent complexities that we just don't understand.

So what does this have to do with marketing and building companies?  Everything... too often, I hear someone make the claim, "this will never work" only to be proven wrong in the market place.  If you're fond of using "never" in your business, be prepared to swallow both feet and to be counted among the fools...

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