"Doing right things" has become a slogan prevailing in air recently. As usual, I choose to be a bystander in such hectic movement. Because I don't believe that such a bureaucratic company can do right things in right time. All discussions, meetings and improvments of process are just waste of time. Doing things right is difficult, but compared to the difficulty of "doing right things", it is just a piece of cake.
As an adage saying: "Without coincidences there would be no stories. " Yesterday, I happened to listen to the lecture given by Pro. Dan Gilbert, its subject was "how to do exactly the right thing at all possible times". He mentioned one equation: "Expected value = (odds of gain) * (value of gain)". As he pointed out people mainly make decision based on the expected value, Unfortunately they are horrible in estimating these two factors.
First, the sense of probability is strongly influenced by the quickness which things come into our mind. It leads to errors in odds estimation.
Second, Prospect theory already tell us the odd pattern of decision making. Depending on how the risky situation is presented, people behave in different ways. That is, if a risk is presented in terms of losses, people will be more risk seeking, while if it's expressed in terms of gains, people will be more risk averse.
Third, people make bad judgment in value of gain. People normally compare the value with the past instead of the possible, which can fuddle our decision. Even you compare with the possible instead of the past, you still make certain kinds of mistakes. It mainly because when we value things, the comparsion can shift in different context, mood and over time.
See, how difficult it is to do right things?! Not to mention in a big group, in a fast changing age. Slogan is jus a slogan, vision is just a vision, wish is just a wish, it is hard to put into practice.
A wise man once said: We tend to underestimate the odds of our future pains, and overestimate the value of our present pleasures. Nevertheless, we still need to try our best to do right things right in all possible time.
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