The spreadsheet always adds up. That is its virtue and its lie. Revenue plus margin plus timing equals a decision, until a human being sits at the other end of the table and decides otherwise.
I trained as an economist, which means I was taught to trust the sum. I became a student of praxeology by choice, which means I learned to distrust it. Ludwig von Mises described economics as the science of human action [1]: not of numbers, but of people pursuing purposes with the means they believe will work. Numbers describe objects. Action describes intentions. And intentions do not add up; they combine, collide and surprise.
The sum that breaks
Across twenty-five years and three continents [2], from a hotel kitchen in Sydney to a classroom in Madrid, I have watched the same scene repeat itself. The model is perfect. The forecast is prudent. The offer is the best anyone has made. And the owner says no: because he does not want to grow, because his daughter wants the business, because he is tired, because he is proud. No column holds that reason. Every column depends on it.
That is the first paradox of 2+2 Is Never 4: the variable you cannot measure is the one that decides the result. Success is not a formula; its variables are fluid, contextual and endlessly recombinable [3].
Spain is about to prove it again
On 29 November Spain goes to the polls, after an early dissolution of the Cortes called once Congress rejected the government’s housing measures [4]. For the next three weeks we will drown in arithmetic: seats, percentages, blocs, coalitions that add up on paper. Every poll will assure us that two plus two equals four.
It will not. A vote is not a datum; it is a decision taken by one person, alone, for reasons that rarely survive a survey. Some will vote from conviction, some from habit, some from fear, many from a single sentence they heard on a Tuesday. The result will look like a sum. It will have been made by millions of individual acts that refused to be averaged. Whatever your choice, make it as an individual, not as a fraction.
The exception was the rule
Business schools love formulas because formulas can be graded. But the companies that last are the ones that treat failure as feedback and rigidity as the real risk [3]. They do not ask “what does the model say?” They ask “who decides, and why?”
Three questions I now ask before trusting any sum. Who is behind each number? What do they want that the number cannot show? What would make them change their mind tomorrow?
There is always a way. It is rarely the one the spreadsheet predicted.
The book starts where this article gives up. 2+2 Is Never 4: There Is Always a Way is available at richardjovani.com.
References
- Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949).
- Ricardo Jovani, biography, richardjovani.com.
- Ricardo Jovani, 2+2 Is Never 4: There Is Always a Way, richardjovani.com.
- Uno TV / AFP, “Elecciones en España 2026: fechas, proceso, partidos y candidatos”, 6 October 2026, unotv.com.
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