The Vegas Illusion: A warning for those who keep score
At the conclusion of a recent meeting in Las Vegas, my comrades had an interesting exchange:
Troubled Tourist: “It seems like everyone won big this weekend except me.”
Astute Vegas Resident: “Yes, it sounds that way because only the winners talk. Nobody announces at the dinner table, ‘Man, I lost $3,000!’ But when you ask them in the stillness of the hotel room, they quietly tell you about their losses.”
Indeed, in many arenas, we only hear from the high performers—and often an exaggerated version of their tales. Examples abound:
- During the college admissions process, students tend to tell many about the schools that accept them; they keep rejections more quiet.
- The start-ups that take off get celebrated in the business press. No one hears of the many that perish.
- Legendary speaker Zig Ziglar observes of underwear advertising: “they don’t put Jockey shorts on fat boys.” On the female side, you see the same in magazines chocked full of touched-up photographs of fakely-gorgeous women.
- Our history teachers cite the hard-to-attribute adage: “History is written by the winners.”
- Organizations celebrate, announce, and replicate their successful initiatives…while failures too often remain hidden – even when it’s in the public’s best interest to know of them.
Who cares? Well, this phenomenon has interesting implications for accountability. It’s generally extremely useful to track real performance-related data—the stuff that answers the question, “How are we doing here?” It’s also useful to compare these data against the goal, budget, history, or benchmarks.
However, when comparing a person or an organization to others, there’s a real risk that the Vegas Illusion is skewing the benchmarks. Information cobbled together through hearsay about what’s a “good” vs. a “bad” number from others is likely influenced by this winner bias.
So, if feel like you’re the only loser around, take heart! The other losers probably just aren’t talking. You might be average after all.
Very well put! It is so much easier to brag about success when many times we can learn more from our failures!
Keep up the great work Pete!
Great thought, Charlie! You sound like you speak from experience…are you from Vegas or something?
@ Pete
Interesting thoughts. I experienced a similar experience while sitting around with high school buddies discussing our glory days on the football field. One former team mate finally reminded us that our record senior year was 1-8. But oh what a powerful 1-8 it was.
I’ve found the winner’s bias can even skew poor results… When heading into an accountability chat with my teammates knowing that I have a bad score, I often focus on the silver lining or positive moments from the week making them seem more relevant than perhaps they really were while rationalizing my failures. The result is less chastising.
The real challenge is simply to report fact and make yourself vulnerable to the sharpening that comes when you allow yourself to be truly critiqued and built back up by your accountability partners through truth, teamwork, and discipline.
I really like this post, Pete. It’s unfortunate how much this country and the world for that matter is scared of failure. It’s taboo to admit that you were wrong or that you invested in something that didn’t work out. This is very cliche but we learn from our failures and our mistakes much more than we learn from our successes. And yet we try to cover up those precious and valuable short-comings.
I’m reminded of a little kid learning to ride a bike for the first time. He is so worried about falling and getting hurt but as soon as he gets hurt he knows what it feels like and that pain no longer worries him or gets in the way of learning to ride his bike. It’s such a simple metaphor but can be applied to more “complex” situations.
Thanks for the thoughts, gang.
Charlie, this reminds me of the dad from Napoleon Dynamite, haha…”I could toss a pigskin a quarter mile.”
JERM, I think we’re all guilty of putting the positive frame on things–especially before a chat with any kind of boss. Hopefully you’re not fooling them or you
.
Sara, I love the bike imagery. Very apt.