Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin confirmed he first learned in the summer of 2012 that George was reviewing the IRS unit that handles requests for tax-exempt status, but he insisted he had no details of the substance of the issue.
It also has a clever little display screen on the top of the unit for displaying caller ID information, the time of day, battery status and message alerts.
"The people most susceptible to this kind of failing are those in marketing and those who've been asked to come in and shake up the status quo, " said Bob Eichinger, CEO of Lominger International, a unit of the executive-search firm Korn Ferry.
Compared with both the complex logistical model and the defensive status quo, this heuristic helped the doctors to send more patients to the coronary-care unit who belonged there and fewer who did not.