Anyway.. I am digressing from what I had in my mind. Coming back to complicated things. Particularly how much money gets spent on finding cures for some of the illnesses (you pick the disease - Cancer, AIDS, etc..). Cancer research alone in the US is a fascinating field. National Cancer Institute alone has spent over $500B in 40 years on - War on Cancer. It continues to remain the second biggest cause of death (the first one is easy to guess - heart disease). The general attitude of the western world is - let us declare a war on something and relentlessly pound our way to get to the cure for that. The general tendency is to find solutions for the most difficult and exciting problems.
Let's take an alternate look at this problem. If you don't get cancer - you won't die from it. It is less intellectually stimulating to advise people to get a 30 min exercise daily, do a yoga routine or create a concerted effort to educate kids to not take up smoking (which is the no. 1 reason for Cancer).
Prevention, many a time is easy and not costly. We just don't find that intellectually stimulating. Period. Simplicity is not appreciated, as we want to spend time on complicated things.
There are similar parallel's in our corporate world. Problem prevention is a highly under-appreciated skill (read - things that will not get you noticed). Corporate examples:
1) Preventing a major accident/incident that could cause multiple $M's going waste.
2) Damage control exercises that prevent permanent damage that no one wants to really own or handle (these are in particular strict no-no's).
3) Prevent an exercise in futility. Refusing to do an exercise of some random analysis which will mostly indicate some random set of results which ego massage management or activity which you would not like to do as doing nothing may be better than doing something (my old blog: http://harshav.blogspot.in/2016/12/the-do-nothing-strategy.html).. etc..
I just finished reading two interesting books. I highly recommend you to read that too.
They talk about the good and bad of problem prevention.
The first book is about Shelby Davis - "The Davis Dynasty" - http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/08/the-davis-dynasty-fifty-years-of-successful-investing-on-wall-street-book-review/.
In this book, the key takeaway for me is the aspect of just preventing all errors of trading by just holding onto high-quality, undervalued insurance stocks Davis purchased for multiple decades. It's interesting to note that he held onto many of the good as well as dud stocks. He just avoided all trading errors by holding onto them over a long period of time!
What a simple problem prevention strategy. That is similar to Warren Buffett, but with a slight twist. Buffett's folksy American wisdom and well-thought-out public persona add to his fame, whereas Shelby Davis was known almost exclusively in insurance circles. He started investing relatively late in life. He would have been a billionaire many times over if he had started investing in his 20s.
The second book is about the Vanderbilt family "Fortune's Children" - how they lost a fortune of $200M (in the 1890s which in today's value would be ~$400B) within a hundred years - https://www.amazon.com/Fortunes-Children-Fall-House-Vanderbilt/dp/1494554011.
The entire book is a series of comedies of errors. From holding a fortune that was more than what was held in the entire US Treasury during the 1890s to losing it all within the next 80 years is a mammoth task.
A quick summary can be read here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2014/07/14/the-vanderbilts-how-american-royalty-lost-their-crown-jewels/#2a4133d8353b.
What am I getting at?
Human beings are wired to respond to a story. That’s pretty much how we live our lives, narrating our own story as we go along. In a sense, prevention is the anti-story. When it comes to health, wealth, or professional achievements - prevention, in the best way possible, robs us of a painful story that might have had a profound impact on us.
If life is built around story-telling, it’s difficult to appreciate the full value of the mechanisms we use to prevent harm, because the corresponding stories never materialize.
It’s much sexier to be a problem solver. You see that description all over people’s LinkedIn profiles and CVs - especially now that I am trying to interview a whole bunch of people. Problem-solving implies a deft intellect and resourcefulness. Problems attract a lot of attention. Solutions bring a lot of acclaims.
Being a problem preventer is much more boring. People see the expected, repeated, competent output from a problem preventer and think little of it. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Jack Welch. These are problem solvers. We know their names because of it.
It would be great if everyone in leadership was a mature, patient, disciplined thinker who innately understood the value of problem prevention. That’s not always the case, though.
It is therefore important for us as smart managers or leaders to understand and appreciate this skill set. In an increasing world of loud self-promotion and advertisement - sane voices can get trampled amid the noise. Differentiating information from noise is so very important.
Ciao till next time...Harsha
What am I getting at?
Human beings are wired to respond to a story. That’s pretty much how we live our lives, narrating our own story as we go along. In a sense, prevention is the anti-story. When it comes to health, wealth, or professional achievements - prevention, in the best way possible, robs us of a painful story that might have had a profound impact on us.
If life is built around story-telling, it’s difficult to appreciate the full value of the mechanisms we use to prevent harm, because the corresponding stories never materialize.
It’s much sexier to be a problem solver. You see that description all over people’s LinkedIn profiles and CVs - especially now that I am trying to interview a whole bunch of people. Problem-solving implies a deft intellect and resourcefulness. Problems attract a lot of attention. Solutions bring a lot of acclaims.
Being a problem preventer is much more boring. People see the expected, repeated, competent output from a problem preventer and think little of it. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Jack Welch. These are problem solvers. We know their names because of it.
It would be great if everyone in leadership was a mature, patient, disciplined thinker who innately understood the value of problem prevention. That’s not always the case, though.
It is therefore important for us as smart managers or leaders to understand and appreciate this skill set. In an increasing world of loud self-promotion and advertisement - sane voices can get trampled amid the noise. Differentiating information from noise is so very important.
