When us
humans come out of a suboptimal experience, we tend to overcorrect in
the opposite direction in our next experience.
Repeated overcorrecting
results in pendulum-ing (which is often sub-optimal behavior).
For
instance, let’s say you dated a workaholic investment banker and the
relationship goes sour (for reasons not qualifying you to be part of Dating a Banker Anonymous).
The next person you may be inclined to date might be a starving artist
– someone completely in the opposite direction. In reality, if you
dated that investment banker but you just wished he/she worked a bit
less, you may want to date a trader, lawyer, or accountant.
In dating, many people are often looking for the opposite of the person they last had a relationship with.
Rather
than completely overcorrecting, a repeated iterative correction,
without going to the extremes, may prove more fruitful. In math, this
idea is represented as a limit of a function oscillating and eventually
approaching an asymptote; in physics this is known as damped
oscillations (for all the math and science geeks).
In
the physical world for instance, repeated or extreme overcorrecting
while driving can cause a car to roll. The idea is to make gradual
correction in the opposite direction towards that happy medium.
The
past 16 years of picking Presidents, demonstrates that the nation has
an inclination towards pendulum-ing. In 1992, we were concerned that
President George H.W. Bush was out of touch with the public (e.g. not
knowing the price of milk and never seeing a scanner before). And so
this country chose a guy named Clinton who was a man of the people and
loved McDonald’s. The nation was then tired of this guy cheating on
his wife and so we yearned for the stability in the prior
administration, thus we pendulumed to a George W. Bush who was pious
and talked about his love for religion. And this past election we
elected someone perceived as very different from Bush.
Even national security policy can vary widely. World War I was a total
quagmire because most countries succumbed to a bizarre notion that the
first country to strike would have an overwhelming advantage. Of
course, this did not happen and the world saw years of trench warfare
with little territory gained. Seeking to avoid this horrible kind of
war is what led to Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. He did not
want to rush into things which turned out to be the wrong thing to do.
Later, World War II turned into the complete mobilization of the nation
but a huge cost of 400,000 lives and required the attention of almost
the entire country. So when we got into a war in Vietnam we pendulumed
to a more limited engagement — the thought was to rather fight them
when they were distant and weak then when they were closer and
stronger. Clearly that didn’t work out, so we followed the Powell
Doctrine of overwhelming force in the first Gulf War. But, of course,
Vietnam taught us that occupation was a likely failure so we left
Saddam Hussein in power. Then in the most recent Iraq campaign we went
back to a more limited engagement … but we decided to be an occupying
force yet again. It appears our leaders are oscillating back and forth
and cannot decide on the best strategy.
And
it is not just military leaders, voters, and hopeless romantics that
pendulum. We all do it in business. You may join a work environment
with no process that is too chaotic, and then move to a new company
which might quickly overwhelm you with the initially desired
bureaucracy. Or if you tried to outsource your lead-gen and it did not
work you might decide to never outsource anything ever again.
The
human species as a whole is very fickle about what we want. We think
we want one thing and when the outcome does not totally work out, we
often go for something completely different. We’re constantly taking
excessive measures in an attempt to correct or make amends for an
error, weakness, or problem, while running off of very little data.
And, so ideally you would want to collect additional data and make
iterative corrections. Just don’t swing too far to the left or right.
