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?
[FORTRAN] will persist for some time -- probably for at least the next decade. -- T. Cheatham