The one thing this flight journey from Hyderabad to Toronto has given me is a reading into an article published by Rolf Dobelli. Rolf Dobelli is a Swiss novelist, thinker, and Entrepreneur. He is also the author of the best seller - "The art of thinking clearly". I just wanted to go over what i read and then will connect back to why I am still thinking over this read after 36 hours of tiresome journey!
Dobelli in this article - must be a extract from his book - talks about a few instances particularly two of them - how a goal keeper reacts in a soccer game and how police officers react to situations leading to a potential brawl. With respect to the goal keeper scenario, he actually talks about penalty shootouts. In a typical penalty shootout, the time it takes for the ball to travel from the shooter to the goal keeper is about 0.3 secs. So the keeper has to think and respond within this time period. The probability of the ball going to the left or right or straight is 33% (1/3rd of a chance). However, it is often noticed (in fact the author contends that it has been the case in almost all of the shootouts out of a sample of 100 games - mind you a good sample size) that the keeper either dives to his right or to his left but never stands still. Dobelli goes on to argue that the keeper is more worried about his action rather than the outcome of the action. The keeper must be thinking that the world would curse him and pull him down to shame should he stand still and allow the ball to travel to left or to his right. However if he puts in a heroic dive to either of his sides and happens to miss the ball, he would still walk away with some glory that there was some effort put in to save the ball. This Dobelli calls - Action Bias. I am now taking the discussion forward - The protagonists in this and many cases are more biased to their actions rather than taking time to think clearly on what could be the outcome to the action and responding accordingly. The problem is not with the character for he is advised by his coach to act immediately after the shooter has kicked the ball. I know 0.3 sec is too small a time to think and act however this is the prime reason we undergo so much of training and practice. If it were to just act without much of thinking, any athletically competent individual could be a goal keeper! So largely things lye in the education system (I am happy to include training and practice session as part of education) or the way we are brought up.
In fact Dobelli in his article refers to situations in the corporate world where individuals are garlanded should they put in heroic efforts and fumble as they achieve the objective where as someone who has remained calm and yet taken appropriate decision with relatively limited bloodshed is just considered another individual. Right from the school, we are given credit for quick decision making however there has been very limited effort put to make us realize what it takes to being calm. It's not just in the school but also up till graduation, an individual is graded (could also be recognition) based on how quickly he or she answers questions posted by the instructor/ faculty. This forces individuals to participate desperately and many of them just respond without thinking clearly and this forms the ground to what happens in the corporate world. As i happen to look at some of the job descriptions posted by firms including some of those high profile ones, they talks about quick decision making. Rather how would it be if someone where to tell you that we don't care how quickly you take a decision but we are more concerned about your hit ratio. I am sure most individuals who are given with the responsibility of decision making are matured enough to reason the time they should allow to be calm and gather sufficient information/ knowledge before they respond to situations!
Finally besides educational system, I believe peer pressure and system pressure does play a big role in individuals taking some absurd decisions, which is a mere response to situations without thinking about the outcome of those actions. What we have been seeing in the past one month in Indian economics is but all - Action Bias. Hopefully the pressure Mr. Rajan has, as he takes over the role of RBI governor, will not impact him and ultimately group him alongside many others who have thrown-ed that chair. Congratulations Mr Rajan!
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