Hi folks,
Saint Augustine didn’t start his life in a saintly way. During his hedonistic youth, he famously prayed “grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” And while he was a brilliant philosopher and theologian, he couldn’t have known that he was perfectly articulating the concept of the Present Bias.
The Present Bias (and other forms of temporal discounting) says that we discount rewards/impacts/punishments the further they are in the future. So if I ask you if you want cake or fruit next Friday, you’re pretty likely to choose the healthy option of fruit. But if I ask you if you want cake or fruit today, you’re much more likely to choose cake today.
What can we take away from this? Likely much, but something that stands out to me is the need to push out the negative impacts of changes we require. Meaning our customers and partners are more likely to agree to obligations they find onerous the further in the future those obligations are required. For example, which seems more likely to get support from our customers?
- Please assess and report on the status of 100 controls by the end of this month.
- Please assess and report on the status of 100 controls by the end of this year.
Right – the latter. Easily.
What does that mean for us? We need to plan well in advance. If we need those 100 controls assessed and we want to minimize pushback from our customers, then we can’t wait until 4 weeks before they’re due – we need to give them as much notice as possible. Because when you look to a year out on the horizon, pretty much everything looks small and agreeable.
Rex