Many of you know that I call Cleveland, Ohio, home. So I felt it behooves me (see photo #3, har) to add a blurb from the convention.
No politics here, just a kind of question that only an analyst would consider.
My family was spooked that I’d be going downtown, after weeks of incessant reporting about safety precautions for the week. But the news junkie that I am, I just had to brave it.
I was surprised to arrive and find hardly any real protesting at all. Where were all these protestors, I wondered?
Is it too hot to be out protesting?
Sure, that seems silly. But anyone who has studied business (or history, for that matter) knows that weather is one of the least appreciated influences of human behavior.
It was nearly 90 degrees in downtown Cleveland today. I for sure wouldn’t want to be looking for trouble in the crippling heat. Was this really influencing what I perceived to be a peaceful convention scene?
Turns out (of course) there’s lots of research about whether heat waves add to or detract from crime. The consensus seems to be that warm weather encourages crime up to a certain point, at which point it becomes too hot to commit crime.
But, I was only down there for a couple of hours, and near the main convention area. Maybe I missed some things.
It did serve as a good reminder for business strategy — for all the planning and risk management that goes into an event, something as simple and unpredictable as the weather can have a huge influence on the outcome.
The forecast calls for more heat and humidity this week — will that keep things calm? Not sure — but only an analyst would think like this.
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