Behavior Gap Newsletter Behavior Gap Sketches

Surprises

by Carl on February 18, 2009

Believe it or not, there are at least two kinds of surprises: bad ones and good ones. Both good and bad surprises have at least one thing in common: they happen when we least expect them.

Can you imagine trying to convince someone at the beginning of 2007 that over the next two years all these bad things would happen? No one would have believed such nonsense.

Most of what we are dealing with right now turned out to be a surprise. A really bad surprise. In hindsight, it looks so obvious, but it has been one bad surprise after another.

Now that we are in the middle of a very scary market it is hard to imagine things ever getting better.

Is it possible that we will be surprised?

Is it possible that some good things that we can’t imagine will start to happen? I am not talking about a return to the crazy version of “normal” we have had the last 10 to 15 years. I am just talking about a good surprise or two.

Tagged as: anchoring, hindsight, surprises

  • Paul you make a good point. For our sake - I hope its a pleasant surprise.
  • Bob D.
    Carl, I sure appreciate your posts and insights. I am ready for a good surprise and hope that it will not take a year or more. Thanks also for taking the time to share your audio post.
  • @Paul: Well said. I was trying to be gentle in that post. It is really interesting that we all "know" that things will change. We have the weighty evidence of history convincing us that they will change, but in the middle of it we still anchor to the recent past and project that into the future (good or bad).
  • It is not possible that we will be surprised, it is inevitable. The only "suprise" is that we don't know what we will be surprised about. (another way of saying we don't know what it is we don't know) What is difficult to fathom at the moment is that such a surprise could be positive. The human mind is predisposed to place disproportionate weight on whatever has just happened; i think this bias extends perhaps 18-24 months in length, roughly back to the beginning of the downturn in summer, 2007. This is the same bias that believes when things are good they will always remain that way as well. Both are costly distortions of reality.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Previous post:

Next post: