Deja vu, all over again - are you guilty?

Ever notice yourself or others making the same mistakes over and over again?  I have seen this in a lot of the places I've worked, and a lot of the problem is that people tend to tolerate "emotional business cases" (latest, loudest, and most charismatic) over "real" business cases (logic, data, and well-thought out strategy decisions).

The root cause is that we like to do fun and exciting things, and real business cases are hard work and sometimes boring.  Then there is the fact that we often take shortcuts when analyzing ideas we like.

Know what?  This is not uncommon - take a look at this comparison of the current BP oil spill to one that happened in 1979.

It's eerie how similar they are, isn't it?  Are you guilty of repeating the mistakes of the past?  How can you break the cycle?