The Concept of Positive Expectancy

I have been thinking about sharing a thought with you’ll since a few weeks. It is a little secret about business and life overall, that I have unveiled through close to 2 decades of work experience. The reason this reckoning takes longer to imbibe is simple. Each level within an organization has different lines of thoughts that create success. Let me explain!

While launching our careers, we are predominantly self-reliant. This is because our results are almost always dependent on own efforts. Our purview of the world is limited and we are largely interested in our own perspective of the truth.

Things start to change when we move along our paths towards junior and senior management. At this stage, our results become more dependant on the way we are able to engage with people as well as drive results through others. Life is all about motivating and influencing/persuading others. We start to understand that the world is dynamic. It is all about giving and taking and creating value with others. At this time, we are always attempting to plan and plot and create schemes of success.

Only when I had my crack at some leadership positions, I could understand this different perspective. When my purview of life and business turned holistic, I realized a way of life that changed my thinking process.

I realized that all the planning and plotting in this dynamic world was limited because everything is chaotic. Currently, we are all dealing with chaos that is inherently disruptive in nature. Obviously, it is almost impossible to plan too far into the future in a disruptive environment. This is the reason for the changed definitions of Long and Short term planning in personal and professional parlance. In my initial years, I was exposed to a requirement that long term plans needed a clear 5-10 years perspective while short term plans needed 2-3 years of clear outlook. However, this thinking has changed to now needing a 2-3 years outlook for a long term plan and 3-6 months for a short term plan.

This led to a changed thinking process. I have adapted myself to believe in the concept of ‘Positive Expectancy’. I define it as creating some short term plans, while somehow letting the long term to take care of itself. The biggest change required to practice this way of thinking is allowing yourself to release control. The other fact that I strongly believe in is that Control is an Illusion, so why attempt it at all. (further defined in another blog https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157741822299120&set=a.10150602516949120&type=3&theater). This mindset also opens up a lot of possibilities rather than stifling your decision making sphere. With just reasonable planning, we can move to execute. We don't need to always be able to see the last mile before starting.

I remember a dialog that Irfan Khan said in one of his movies. ‘Just imagine that you have your Ferrari standing in your garage. But you want to take it out only when you are certain that all the signals on the road are going to be green. The right mindset should be to take the Ferrari out. You will be surprised to notice that most of the signals are green. And, even if the one in front of you is red, deal with that situation when it comes. You might not notice it, because of the thrill of driving such a beautiful car. Just take a leap of faith and allow yourself to believe that things will turn out to be alright!’

I am certain that this mindset is one of need as well as benefit. The need comes from the current reality where life is unpredictable, which makes long term planning futile. The benefit comes from the simplicity of the concept. Imagine how many more ideas will get executed as we allow ourselves to relax on our craving to see the ideal final outcome.

Personally, I have figured it out through years of experience. I hope that this blog makes people see and adapt to this mindset at earlier stages. I am certain that it can create the right value for businesses as well as life as a whole.