LSW#36 Why We Choose Conventional Failure over Unconventional Success
The difference and what makes it hard
Note: The post uses careers as the context, but the framework applies to leadership and strategy as well.
Shunning unconventional paths
Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
— John Maynard Keynes
I often find folks sticking around in unfulfilling careers for much longer, and never making the career move that they’ve always wanted. This includes yours truly.
There are many reasons for this, money being the least. Some of my clients have multiple lifetimes of retirement savings, but still find the notion of change paralyzing. It’s a fairly complex topic but there’s one dynamic that’s not as widely understood.
👉 It’s the difference between conventional failure and unconventional success — we choose to fail conventionally, instead of trying to succeed unconventionally.
What do I mean?
Imagine explaining to your parents (or anyone else whose opinion matters) :
“Dad, I became a surgeon, but miserable.”
“Dad, I tried to become a rock star, but things just didn’t work out.”
Which one is an easier conversation? More importantly, which one is easier to justify to OURSELVES?
Conventional failure is sometimes easier to accept when compared to trying and failing on unconventional paths. So we don’t even consider them and continue to tread along supposedly “safer” but ultimately unfulfilling paths.
There are multiple mechanisms at play, and understanding them can help to think clearly.
Why we choose conventional failure
1. Ease of justification
Option 1 is easier to explain to everyone. Hey, at least you tried, and what you were trying wasn’t stupid. But Option 2? Of course, you failed. That was a dumb move, we tell ourselves.
There’s comfort in the majority, even if it’s wrong for us. It dominate our decision-making when stuck in careers; even when we have the option to do something about it. In investment literature, this kind of herd behavior is a well-understood phenomenon.
Warren Buffet gives the example of lemmings:
Most managers have very little incentive to make the intelligent-but-with-some-chance-of-looking-like-an-idiot decision. Their personal gain/loss ratio is all too obvious: if an unconventional decision works out well, they get a pat on the back and, if it works out poorly, they get a pink slip.
(Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.)
— quoted in Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin
Just like the lemmings dropping into the sea en-masse, we simply accept the state of things instead of challenging it.
2. Status-quo bias
We’re more likely to stick with the current course of action even when we know there’s less likelihood of success. Why? Failure is much more painful when changing course compared to staying put. Inaction and staying the course is seen as no-action on our part, not realizing that the status-quo is in itself an active decision.
Poker champion and decision-making expert Annie Duke sums it up perfectly:
We do not think of sticking with the status quo as an active decision in the same way that we view switching as one. We are much more concerned with errors of commission than errors of omission (failures to act). We’re more wary of “causing” a bad outcome by acting than “letting it happen” through inaction.
Status-quo bias is a proven phenomenon in multiple research studies. It’s also in addition to sunk costs that make it even harder.
3. Available models of failure/success
Another dynamic working against us is the readiness bias. There’re plenty of folks working the unconventional model, but in the absence readily available models, we struggle to envision alternatives, let alone figure out how to pull it off.
We also tend to have more readily available models of failure on unconventional paths. But that’s the mistake — confusing conventionality with probabilities of success. They’re not always correlated, let alone causal.
4. The inertia of identity
Changing your identity is much harder than changing careers/jobs. When we identify too much with our roles/jobs, they end up having a stranglehold on our behaviors and severely limit what we’re willing to try.
One solution is to look at identity as an effect of your actions, rather than a cause.
5. Some additional ones
“At least I’m not like them” fallacy — we give ourselves a pass by lowering our own standards and seeking lower benchmarks. We forget that those “others” might not have the same opportunity or options as we do. For more fallacies like these, check out my LinkedIn post.
Money — it’s easy to calculate the impact of a decision in purely monetary terms. This ease of counting makes money the dominant criteria. We forget other equally important aspects like identity, time, and energy.
Lack of clarity — unconventional options usually lack clearly defined pathways and are often more windy. They also lack clear stratification of the different levels or well understood best practices.
Definition of success — we forget to discern where our success criteria came from. Often societal expectations play a big, but unacknowledged, factor.
Consider your situation with careers, strategy, or leadership. Which one of these factors is dominant? How can you change it?
Hopefully, these ideas will help to look at your situation differently, or at least understand it better. Reach out if I can help in any way.
That does it for this edition! Have a great rest of the week.