Poker machine payoffs and records management strategy
One thing that makes us very human is a desire to do things that work.
The problem, is that our brains don't really understand the difference between something that worked once, and something that works reliably.
We typically experiment until something works once, then we keep doing that on the basis it worked once, and now we have just enough to keep our staff - rather than trying to work out whether it was just luck that got us there, and we need to keep experimenting.
From a cognitive standpoint, we're really bad at statistics.
This is why poker machines work.
They pay off just often enough to ensure two things -
That we pull the lever button again
That we almost always lost money overall.
The psychology of records funding is very similar.
We're addicted to poker machine payoffs.
We listen to people who have recieved their latest poker machine payoff budget - the latest spike.
And we do the same thing.
We also fall into the trap of broadcasting the wrong signal ourselves - we ask for budget 20 times, and one of them pays off - so then we go out and tell everyone else that it worked, and they try for our poker machine payoff.
Overall though, what's the direction of budget for most of us?
Down.
It's a trend of down - but with little spikes that convince us that we might have just cracked it.
This is exactly what poker machine payoffs look like.
The alternative to gambling is just hard work.
It requires us to be intrapreneurs looking for a stable success formula, rather than gamblers looking for their next budget hit.
What's your formula?