How Can We Fail Epically By Failing Slowly?
We always stall when we’re doing things that make us feel uncomfortable, especially when it involves doing something we might be held accountable for. We stall in the face of decisions, be it a high-leverage one or not. We go around our days picking choices we know almost nothing about. We choose to believe that the experts in their specific areas are right. It may be the tech guys in our department, the car dealer or the Internet at large. The issue is we can’t learn everything. But I believe it is essential for us to know how to dig deep enough to decipher whether our choice is made based on superstition or fact.
How well do we lie to ourselves?
Apparently, very well. We’re more used to dissembled lies such as “Does this dress make me look fat?” over “Who is the weakest person on our team?” It is understandable. We save our feelings and potentially avoid an awkward situation within ourselves. On the flip side, we’re also pulling ourselves in the abyss of never knowing whether we’re wrong of our opinion. This way, we don’t fail dramatically. This way, it seems like we’re almost never failing.
It feels better; albeit temporarily.
As human beings, we respond mainly to urgency and emergencies. It seems a lot simpler to find motivation to workout for that (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime wedding photo shoot as compared to exercising to improve our overall cardiovascular health. It seems easy to get everyone’s attention when we’re in the middle of a security crisis, but fixing the educational system looks too far-fetched. It is similar with the case of global warming. One degree every few years doesn’t make good TV. There are no vivid images, and it appears no immediate action need to be taken.
Why should we give up something we enjoy now to make an infinitesimal change in something that is going to happen many decades in the future?
We don’t see our coal being burned. We don’t see stuff coming out of our car. We don’t live near a glacier. It is all invisible. We know it isn’t, but we choose to believe that it is. We don’t suffer and die in one broad stroke. We die by a million little cuts of the decisions we make that we hardly hold ourselves accountable for. More likely than not, we don’t fail epically. We fail slowly.
We fail so slowly that we feel it is okay to continue failing.
We fail by failing to measure what is truly important. We would like to think that customer surveys are the best gauge for understanding customers’ satisfaction. But as customers ourselves, we don’t measure how good a service is or how optimal a product is. As consumers ourselves, we measure how well of an experience we had as compared to our past or projected expectations. It is less about being perfect, immediate or cheap.
It is more about interaction, expectation exceeded and basic form of respect.
Imagine this. Your friend booked an appointment with a dentist at 10 am, and was informed that the cleaning procedure would take 30 minutes. Your friend came in early at 9.50 am, and it turned out that the dentist was running ten minutes early. Your friend was called into the room and the dentist kept him in the chair for 20 minutes and had him out earlier ahead of schedule.
Would your friend:
(A) sing praises of such a service?
(B) complain that the dentist did not do a thorough enough dental duty?
I believe it can swing either way depending on our varied expectation and worldview. Some of us prefer a visit to the dentist to include all that dental overhead stuff in order to count, whereas some of us bothered to ask a simple honest question — “Why?”
