Past and Prologue.

Name that Holding Company.
(There are no wrong answers.)

Cindy Rose the new CEO of soon-to-be-picked-like-a-chicken-carcass-by-my-wife's-grandmother, WPP, is just a couple of months into her tenure at the holding company, and though WPP hails itself as "the creative transformation company," 

Rose has already hired McKinsey to help WPP creatively transform.

(Nasty parenthesis: You're often judged by the company you keep. Since the year 2,000, McKinsey has been fined over $1,700,000,000 for a consistent pattern of mis-deeds.)

Including $650,000,000 for helping a pharma company get people addicted to opioids.

And $122,000,000 for ethical boo-boos in Africa.

This is all after Ms. Rose's predecessor hired McKinsey to help WPP shift into "growth mode." 

That sounds like me shifting into "dating Jennifer Lawrence mode."

I'd betcha a tainted press-release that over the last five years WPP has spent more on a) McKinsey and b) Awards entries than they have on c) creative salaries.

I read the Rose/McKinsey news with more than a modicum of disbelief. I know you're supposed to get back on a horse quickly after you're thrown by one. But unlike McKinsey, horses don't usually charge you $20,000,000 to knock you to the dust and cover you in manure. 

Decimation, desiccation, death in three book covers.

To me, it all seemed to fly in the face of even the smallest iota of common sense. 

When I think about common sense, I think about the Oracle of Delphi. The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece (none of whom worked for McKinsey) boiled the Delphic Oracle's precepts down to seven from their complete known list of 307. They are:

Chilon of Sparta - "Know thyself."
Solon of Athens - "Nothing to excess."
Thales of Miletus - "A pledge comes from madness."
Bias of Priene - "Most men are bad."
Cleobulus of Lindos - "Moderation is the chief good."
Pittacus of Mitylene - "Know thine opportunity."
Periander of Corinth - "Forethought in all things."

Even if you, as I do, charitably cross out the wisdom of Bias of Priene, you're still left with six pretty good thoughts on how you should run your life and your business.

I've annotated the above for today's world. IMHO, all the wisdom you need to succeed in the world, no matter what it is you do.

Know thyself--Be a good person and true to what you regard as good. Be generous, but uncompromising if it compromises your self.

Nothing in excess--Don't go all in for the latest trend, the latest buzzwords. There are no panaceas.

A pledge comes from madness--don't lie or overpromise.

Moderation is the chief good--Very much like nothing in excess. As they used to say in OTB commercials, "bet with your head, not over it."

Know thine opportunity--Strike when you're hot and the opportunity, too, is hot.

Forethought in all things--Don't be rash and lurch after shiny objects. Plan and trust your planners.

When Rose and the Oracle collided in my mind, naturally the collision yielded a headline. A synthesis of all this. 

The headline summed up to me how supposedly the smartest people--the biggest salaries, controlling the most revenue and the greatest number of jobs and, therefore, a large number people's lives--often have the least wisdom and, even worse than a lack of wisdom, have learned least from what's happened before.

Onto the headline that formed in my noggin:

She lives Defying Delphi.
Not just Rose, to be fair.
All of the pot-takers, pocket-fillers, and integrity-killers.

Defying Delphi.
Ignoring logic.
Not knowing what business you're in.

Trusting specious experts.

Ignoring legacy, history, heritage, tradition.

A bit like the dissolution of Doyle Dane Bernbach. 
Or Y&R. Or JWT. Or Scali. Or Ammirati. Or Needham.
Or one-thousand other companies the Defying Delphi-ers destroyed.

Good luck. And speaking of the Ancients: