Overreacting to Losing Can Start a Pattern of More Losing
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Photodisc/Thinkstock(PROVO, Utah) — As the late football coach Vince Lombardi often said, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”
Lombardi particularly hated to lose, but usually didn’t overreact following a defeat, figuring the formula that generally proved successful shouldn’t be tampered with.
However, some coaches and business executives often make hasty decisions when things don’t go their way, sometimes resulting in more setbacks.
A Brigham Young University study bears this out. Co-author Brennan Platt says that he looked at data from NBA coaching decisions over two decades to determine how personnel was changed following a narrow victory or narrow loss.
Typically, lineups were more often adjusted after defeats than triumphs and that changes that weren’t well-thought-out resulted in at least one more loss per season.
Platt says this kind of thinking has adverse effects in the business world as well, with bosses sometimes overanalyzing an employee’s performance when things didn’t go right. Much of the time, a supervisor doesn’t take into account situations out of someone’s control, which can occasionally be chalked up to just plain bad luck.
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