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A Sense of Perspective

4 June, 2018 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Fear of the new

We don’t like things that are new or unusual.  It is part of our nature.  When we were cavemen, it paid to be risk averse.  New things could bite us, so we preferred what we knew.  The status quo made us feel safe.

That is why we invest in risk and control departments.  Their job is to ensure that nothing unforeseen pokes its head above the parapet.  It is the management response to the caveman instinct.

Here is a question…

In 2016 how many people were killed by:

  • Diarrhoea
  • Guns in the USA
  • Heart Attacks
  • Natural Disasters
  • Road Injuries
  • Terrorism

Which cause of death was the most deadly?

What can you remember about 2016?

2016 was a dreadful year.  The “Islamic State” was rising, and there were horrific attacks at Brussels airport and on Bastille Day in Nice.

In 2016 three significant earthquakes shocked the world, killing people in Central Italy, Ecuador and Indonesia.  Hurricane Matthew killed 100s in Haiti.  On a positive note, the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa finally died out.

In 2016 gun deaths in the US rose following 15 years of relative stasis with 477 mass shootings.  In one single incident, a security guard opened fire in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 53 others.

The real picture

In 2016 the death tolls from those six causes of death looked something like this:

  • Heart Attacks – nine and a half million deaths
  • Road Injuries – one and a half million deaths
  • Diarrhoea – one and a third million deaths

And they were just the causes I picked out.  1.2 million people died of tuberculosis, 2.9 million died of respiratory diseases, and 5.7 million died from strokes.

Then there was the stuff that you can’t see on the graph

  • Global terrorism – thirteen thousand deaths
  • Natural disasters (all of them; fire, flood and pestilence) – ten thousand deaths
  • People shot in the US – ten thousand deaths.

These three causes of death didn’t register.  The media blew their significance up out of all proportion.

In the UK in 2016, there were somewhere between 2 and 9 deaths caused by terrorists (depending on who you count as a terrorist).  In our green and pleasant land, newsagents have killed thousands of times more people than al-Qaeda ever managed.  Cigarettes and alcohol are deadly.

It is the normal stuff that will get you

This isn’t a blog post about terrorism and racial harmony (though the French outcry about the burkini seems a little unnecessary).

This post is about perspective.

There is a vast amount of media hype and noise about issues that are novel and new. Yet precisely because they are novel and new, they are largely irrelevant.  Stories about children dying from diarrhoea or middle-aged men having heart attacks don’t sell newspapers.  The real killers pass by unnoticed.  We see them every day, and they blend into the background.

Worry about the unremarkable

The same is true in business.  The biggest problems — money wasters, customer dissatisfies or general organisational screw-ups — are the mundane everyday occurrences, not the management noise. Worry less about the risks and more about the common or garden issues.  They are the real killers.

You have precious few resources; focus on the things that matter, not the current panic.

Take it from me; a burkini never hurt anyone.

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Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: availability heuristic, pareto principle, perceived risk, what don't you see

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

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  1. Por que as empresas morrem? Por James Lawther – QUALITY ROAD says:
    9 October, 2024 at 7:05 pm

    […] A Sense of Perspective […]

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