pretending that a foetus without a single neuron is a person is as daft as pretending a corpse's fingernail is a person
Left alone inside its mother, the fetus with a single neuron will mature into a "full-fledged" baby. The same is not true for a fingernail.
I think potential is an important metric -- left in the natural state it was found, what would/could x turn into? An acorn would be a tree, a fetus would be a human.
When traveling at a true 70 mph, as indicated by our highly precise Datron optical fifth-wheel equipment, the average speedometer (based on more than 200 road-tested vehicles) reads 71.37 mph.
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/speedometer-scandal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedometer#Error
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/05/11/how-fast-are-really-going-accuracy-speedometers/
how do you know that good CEOs are rare?
By retrospect, with the understanding that past performance isn't a guarantee of future performance. Thus, you can look back and objectively say "he was a good CEO", but it's much harder to predict how good he'll be at the next gig.
My suspicion is that, once you eliminate the most obvious ways to run a company badly, it's all a big crap shoot.
The CEO takes the Obvious Ways Global Playbook and translates that into policy, vision, and action. Then he socializes it and gets buy-in -- that's the hard part, and why there's infighting at any level.
they're saying to you "I don't know you very well."
Then why ask for their opinion or business advice?
"An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of code." -- an anonymous programmer