Mistaking Correlation for Causation

I recently presented at the UW's All-Campus Leadership Conference (ACLC). It was an almost complete waste of my time. Two motivational speakers presented. They spouted the same corporate-esque pseudoscience that you'd find in a Fortune 1000 company. Buzzwords like 'purpose', and 'goal orientation' flew around like carrion circling a carcass.

Most cantankerous of all, one of the speakers requested that we write three our goals on a glorified index card. My goals:
1. Keep rockin'
2. really freakin'
3. Hard

Sufficeth to say, I didn't take their suggestion to heart, and here's why:
Self-actualization is crap, pseudoscience, rubbish, etc. (esp. etc.). Writing your goals down won't make you do anything, and lord knows I don't have trouble achieving my goals. "You've got to have a plan to get where you want to go in life," the demagogues uttered. I mused that I doubted they had the goal of being motivational speakers when they were in college, so perhaps they should have followed their own advice. Or perhaps more frightening, might their advice be wrong?

I also seem to recall an anecdote about Fortune CEO's having certain characteristics, say being hard workers, honest, or some other such desirable trait. The implication being that if you obtain the aforementioned set of traits, then you too can become a CEO. A similar anecdote is made about joining a fraternity and becoming a CEO.

This is, of course, a fallacy. I'm sure that all CEO's possess characteristics such as dilligence, etc. (esp. etc.), but obtaining their skills did not make them CEO, but was required of them to be a CEO. Many people are in fraternities that are not CEO's. But perhaps those CEO's that are in fraternities are so because being in a fraternity signifies that they had a privileged upbringing, were well networked, and went to a good school. Similarly, there are many hardworking people who will never become CEO's. Achieving a high corporate position is as much about luck and status as it is about work ethic or longevity of service.

In essence, these men confused correlation for causation.