Murphy’s Law!

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Murphy’s Law! / 096, 07 Oct 2023

All too often, when things go wrong, or we have the opposite result to what we intended, we roll our eyes and invoke the so-called Murphy’s law. A few examples:

-?????? I left my house without an umbrella, and it began to rain

-?????? Immediately after I invested in some shares, their price started falling

-?????? My queue wasn’t moving, I changed lines – then my old line started to move

And many more such statements. We have all experienced these and found some comfort in attributing them to the popular Murphy’s law. But these idioms do not represent the actual law; in fact, it may surprise you to know that Murphy’s law is actually a call to excellence – it essentially means that we have to anticipate and plan for failures! Intrigued? Do read on!

Murphy’s law is attributed to Capt. Edward A. Murphy who was working on an US Air Force base in California in 1949. He was reportedly working on sensors needed to measure impact of critical speed (G-Forces) on pilots. Apparently when the sensor malfunctioned, Capt. Murphy is reported to have made the famous statement “if things can go wrong, they will”. This was humorously reported in other publications after a few years, and since then it became a popular idiom. Anything that could go wrong was attributed to Murphy’s law (they would anyway have gone wrong) rather than to the persons involved, who deflected the blame. Over time, the original purpose of this statement got muddled, and it is the idioms that are popular now. But the Murphy’s law is actually a pragmatic one that helps us anticipate and plan around possible failures. We can do this by:

• Having a Plan B: We anticipate that in case things do not work out, we will have an alternate plan. For example, we are confident that we will get a large order and meet our targets; but plan B can be a bunch of smaller orders that can cover up the gap in case we lose the larger one. Such an approach prevents panic or paralysis when we things do not go our way.
• Play the Devil’s advocate: It is always important to critically question any major decision before we implement it. Instead of building a chorus or echo chamber that accentuates the management decision, good leaders pause to ask, “what can possibly go wrong” or “what is the fatal flaw in our assumptions”. This check helps improve the quality of a decision and the probability of its success.
• Build multiple scenarios: especially for critical situations like a major capital investment, it is good to build multiple scenarios. What do we do in case market slows down? What do we do if the competition builds something better and cheaper? What to do if the interest rates spike sharply? Thinking through these will keep us in better shape for all eventualities.

To summarise, the good old Murphy’s law is not a convenient excuse but a wake-up call for us to understand that things can go wrong despite the best of intentions. It is also a call for us to look around corners, anticipate impact of future events, and plan accordingly for multiple scenarios. Such planning builds resilience and decreases chances of failure, boosts those of success. It also teaches us to take ownership (always carry an umbrella during the monsoons, invest after careful analysis and be patient with your investment and your queue) and do not seek convenient excuses for failures!

I hope you enjoyed reading this one, and as always, I request you to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section. Let us build a conversation around this topic!

Warm regards, Krishnakumar.

Image courtesy:

murphy's law - Bing images

References:

Murphy’s Law: Definition, Explanation, History, Views, Examples ( testbook.com )

Murphy's law - Wikipedia