Dan GIlbert Revisited

We discussed Dan Gilbert in week one and we are revisiting him again here in week five but also adding in protected values.  The previous post listed three protected values that I hold and ranked them in order of how likely I was to trade one of those values away for some other gain. What Dan Gilbert talks about is how people are conditioned to make bad choices. This seems particularly relevant when discussing protected values. 

Not everything in life is a zero sum game. If one group gains the right to vote, you haven't lost your right to vote. If one group gains the right to marry, your marriage isn't suddenly annulled. However, in leadership roles there are times that things might be zero sum. You can only have so much in the way of resources and finances. When choosing to allocate shipping you may run low on trucks. Or even deciding to whom to give the limited amount of money allocated to raises are all zero-sums. 

When someone holds a protected value so tightly that they cannot compromise it skews the equations that Gilbert uses to make his points. Some may find this worse than others. I may fire an excellent producer if he is racist. I can always train another to produce and the overall productivity of a department may increase if a toxic person is gone. So in essence, I don't feel that I lose anything by firing a racist. However, my third protected value is courtesy and if I fire someone simply because they are a little brusque I may dent productivity more than I gain anything in return.

In other words, and as Gilbert mentions, rational decision making can be adversely affected by emotions. Not that protected values are emotions but strong emotions can be brought to the surface when protected values are challenged. Managers and leaders should be aware of how far they are willing to bend in order to make the best decisions. It is unlikely that I would ever compromise equality but then again I don't need to do so. Diverse companies outperform norms by significant margins. It just so happens that my strongest protected value works well with successful leadership.