Evan Coopersmith

A disproportionate quantity of time and money is spent in the attempt to avoid failures. If a once promising young quarterback’s development is flagging, even if the head coach still has millions of dollars remaining on his contract, the QB won’t be the only one getting sacked. Senior management will hire consultants at dizzying hourly rates to avoid the ignominy of failure. And of course, couples counselors are paid hefty sums to help stabilize and/or save relationships.&nbsp;&nbsp;

These are worthwhile pursuits, at least on their face. Who wants a future franchise quarterback to stumble? What business wouldn’t want to stave off its demise? And what couple wouldn’t want to repair their romance?

Should the goal of the Chicago Bears’ brass be to ensure that Justin Fields is the best quarterback that he can be, or that the Bears’ are led by the best possible signal caller? Should a senior employee devote 100% of their effort to ensuring that their current employer avoids financial ruin, or ensure that their finite career is spent as productively as their skill sets will allow? Should one member of a couple be wholly focused on salvaging a relationship or pursuing the best possible union their characteristics will allow?

Loyalty and theologically-based morality aside, these questions are nuanced. If Justin Fields really is the next (first?) great Bears quarterback, then firing a coach is just one among many reasonable and potentially necessary actions. If a business retains the potential for exponential growth, then perhaps those consultants are a small price to pay. And if one is truly navigating the undulations of marital hardship with the person with whom they can once again build a fulfilling life, then counseling is cheap at any price.&nbsp;

But if the implied upside is no longer present, these efforts, these expenditures of scarce resources (time and money) are not only futile, but prohibit other efforts that might be far more fruitful. 

Folks who write code for a living will often lament the idea of software that “<a href="https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-handle-errors-with-grace-failing-silently-is-not-an-option-de6ce8f897d7/">fails silently</a>.” For the uninitiated, this is when an application errs without providing information about that failure or worse, even the fact that failure has already occurred. Software that fails silently is like the Thanksgiving turkey that has been in the oven for the past several hours, but while the light indicated that the oven was on, the turkey was sitting in its pre-dinner cubicle at room temperature.&nbsp;

If the oven had communicated its dysfunction to its user during the early morning hour, any number of options would have appeared, ranging from an impromptu repair, to supplication at the doorstep of a neighbor with a functioning stove, to calling an audible and firing up the charcoal grill in bitter November cold. All of these would be preferable to removing the turkey from the oven at dinner time, only to discover that for the past couple hours, it was sitting in the same air as the folks watching football in the den.&nbsp;

Plans cannot change until the previous plans are discarded. And the previous plans (sunk cost fallacies be-damned) will typically remain in force until it is clear that they are no longer viable.&nbsp;

In this vein, a flawed plan that announces its flaws early and often might be vastly superior to a mediocre plan that limps along indefinitely, masking its limitations and shortcomings until a prohibitive quantity of time and treasure has been committed.

Returning to our quarterbacks, corporate strategies, and marriages, while it is somewhat natural to focus on fixing what ails them, it might be, in the long run, a more valuable strategy to determine their viability sooner.

No franchise wishes to invest a decade and nine-figures worth of salaries on a quarterback whose ceiling is an early playoff exit. No for-profit entity wants to drain the coffers to enrich McKinsey, only to limp along a few more years without reaching the strata of which their founders dreamed. And I suspect few married couples would prefer several more decades of disinterest and rancor over short-term suffering and the chance at a more desirable life thereafter.5&nbsp;

No, I’m not arguing that folks should ditch their spouses rather than work on their marriages. Yes, I value the sanctity of the union generally and my own personally. My only argument, which should be painfully obvious given the borderline unacceptably repetitive structure of this essay, is that if the marriage is doomed, finding out earlier would be preferable.&nbsp;

So it might behoove any of the relevant decision-makers to optimize not for the success of the current paradigm, but for whatever circumstances will most rapidly and reliably reveal the true potential thereof. 

The worst result for the young quarterback’s franchise is not a horrible season in which his inability to process NFL defensive schemes and deliver the ball accurately becomes painfully obvious. The worst result for corporate employees is not the failure of the business. The worst result for a marriage (or a couple considering marriage) might not be separation.&nbsp;

Thus, we should be asking ourselves early and often:

“What would need to be true for this venture to reach its desired outcomes?”

“What would need to be true for this venture to be permanently unable to reach those outcomes?”

“What circumstances could reveal the truths implied by the first two questions?”

We should not seek the best short-term outcome. We should seek the information required to reach the broader, overarching goal. What information are you currently lacking? What would it take to gain that information? Wouldn't that clarity be worth almost any cost?

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