Why Most Things Fail

Link to your site | Feedback | Invite a friend

It is for this reason that most public policy measures taken by governments too fail, and even result in unintended consequences that make the situations even worse. Ormerod points to the increase in unemployment and crime in the post second world war period, when government intervention in public life was its highest in comparison to any prior period.

The author makes several interesting points. One concerns the misguided propensity of governments around the world to protect industries, and at the same time, to promote competition between firms in their quest for a perfectly competitive market. According to Ormerod, some degree of co-operation between firms increases their fitness for survival. Similarly, firms in industries which are not protected by competition from outside have a higher overall level of fitness for survival.

But of course, as in the parallels he draws with evolution, fitness does not guarantee survival. Evolution is characterized more by extinction, than by the survival of the fittest. As with evolution, even the businesses which are most fit will eventually fail.

So what is to be done? Failure and extinction are inevitable, and fitness does not ensure survival. However, being unfit is almost a guarantee for early extinction. Fitness may provide an edge, albeit a slight one, for a company to last longer than its less agile competitors.

According to the author, innovation, evolution and competition are the hallmarks of a successful system. Individual extinctions and failures, paradoxically, strengthen the species and the system. Businesses must experiment with lots of processes and products, choose the ones that work, leave the others behind and move on.

Why Most Things Fail offers an effective and timely antidote to the promises of the snake-oil salesmen in the management guru industry, who guarantee personal or business success in just a few easy steps. The book suggests that, while undue pessimism may well guarantee business or personal failure, even the best laid plans and strategies do not ensure success.