You’re probably wondering what I’m getting at here. It’s actually very simple – it’s something I’ve given a lot of thought to and a brand of common sense that is overlooked, ignored, or minimally disregarded. Take a look at this graph:
It depicts the classic abyss between first impression and actual performance. The project lead pitches a new development effort. Expectations are set high, but delivery is far below. An entrepreneur pitches the VC on a new business, describing market opportunity in the hundreds of billions, revenues of hundreds of millions a year, and liquidity of billions, only to find that after three years just staying alive is a challenge.
This is an old graph but it tells the story:
Do you see the red and green dots? These represent VC-funded investments. This is what happened pre- and post-dotcom bust. The green dots are IPOs and the red ones are VC-funded companies that went out of business. We all know that when these companies/ideas were pitched the representation was high as a kite. So what happened? The delta between initial representation and performance delivered.
Just for fun, let’s look at a couple more examples. Think about the new job. Pre job, you walk in with this dynamite resume that makes you out to be the king of all interview candidates – you’re perfect, ideal, and to top it off you’re good looking! You’re too good to be true and that’s why you’re getting hired. You start work, glad hand everyone, give a great first presentation at the company meeting or customer conference, and all are impressed. Your first month you work your ass off, everyone is in awe of your work ethics and results – you’re on top of the world. Six months go by and the truth begins to emerge: routinely late for work, missed meetings, missed deadlines, sick a lot, and poor deliverables resulting in some pissed off people. The implosion is just around the corner.
What about a romantic relationship? You think you’ve found the perfect partner. Attentive, caring, patient, and whatever else goes into making one an eHarmony commercial. Then the period of decline begins to emerge as your partner reveals himself with reality being far from the initial representation. Suddenly, the perfect partner is preceded by prefixes such as “un” and “in”, and eHarmony pulls their offer to have you appear on primetime TV.
This story isn’t really that extreme for everyone and everything it’s just meant to dramatize the Expectation Theory— a simple phenomenon that ultimately, in any given situation, we can’t avoid our innate behavior and help from migrating to our natural point of equilibrium. We just can’t help being ourselves no matter how hard we try. We can improve, but we can’t escape.
I really hope to blog again.
