I spent a few years as a manager at a major aerospace contracting firm. As part of that experience, I spent some time in risk management meetings. A lot of that effort is spent trying to quantify how much risk is in a particular product, market segment, or action. Then probabilities are assumed, mitigation strategies are considered and monitors and controls are set. A plan is developed in case that risk is realized, despite what you have done to avoid or decrease it.

After that, a group of people will look at the whole picture and decide if the reward of taking a certain path justifies the risk.  It is not an exact science at all, but it provides a framework to gather everything that is known and make an informed decision.  It is hard to categorize what you don’t know but maybe you can bound it with an assumption.

The moral of that story is that it is a deliberative process. It happens behind closed doors, and in private. And after all of the hemming and hawing and arguments have been settled, a decision to do something or not pops out. If the answer is to do nothing, the only thing spent was your time in the process, versus possibly millions of dollars later.

That is why I am baffled by these various CEOs fighting towards microphones to  yap about the Georgia voting laws. Most CEOs worth the money they make wouldn’t pop off like this. If I had a stake in these companies I would be looking to sell.

The Major League Baseball situation is pretty easy. They signed a deal with the China a couple of days after coming out against the law. We know the Chinese want Joe and his team in power, because they own them. Angering the communists is a pretty big risk to their bottom line so it was a no-brainer.

The Delta CEO is a strange one. At first he came out for the bill because he said that it expanded weekend voting and Sunday voting. Then he reversed course a few day later saying that it didn’t match Delta’s values. Maybe he should have figured in not taking a stand at all as an option. That would probably save them quite a bit in the short run.

Then you have Coca-Cola, Apple, Merck, and a ton of others coming out and making divisive statements about a law that truly isn’t that out of line. It makes me wonder if they are being leaned on by the Democrats, who know they don’t have enough of a mandate to change laws, but can apply pressures to bottom lines.

There has to be a reason, because venturing into an area of unknown risk this large is usually something that is avoided by companies that want business from both sides of the political spectrum. These statements can turn off entire voting blocs worth of business, They are not normally made unless someone has stepped in and identified a huge loss, or the converse, a huge reward for doing so.