Source: Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post ( Free Registration )

A bit of unsolicited advice to business executives trying to explain why their company or their industry is suddenly in the soup: Please spare us the "perfect storm" metaphor. It's hackneyed, for starters. It doesn't square with the facts. And for people who fancy themselves leaders, it's downright unbecoming. The reason the perfect storm is such an appealing metaphor for these shipwrecked captains of industry is that it appears to let them off the hook. After all, who can blame you if the ship goes down in one of those freak, once-in-a-century storms that result when three weather systems collide? It's an act of nature that nobody could have predicted -- or so the story goes.

Read Full Article: A perfect storm? No, a failure of leadership