If your child is good at Art and poor at Maths, what do you do? Find extra Art classes to provide them with the opportunity to fulfil their talent. Or enrol in extra Maths classes to give them a better chance at achieving a pass mark?
That’s a hypothetical question and, because of all the additional factors – how good are they at Art? Do they want to study medicine and so on. There’s no easy answer. Decision-making can be very difficult. Sometimes just being decisive, instead of becoming paralysed with information, is the best option.
The heart of most quandaries
At the heart of most of our quandaries is often an economic principle. That humans have limited resources and unlimited wants. Our resources (as companies and people) are finite. There is only so much time, money, skill, and equipment that we can use. Yet we want to sign up bigger orders, play golf once a week and hire a hotshot new sales director.
Back in the “80’s economists recognised, that calculating the ‘pluses’ and ‘minuses’ of a course of action is not always a rands and cents exercise. There are often implicit costs. Some of which are invaluable or priceless, that need to be accounted for.
The cost of spending a weekend binge-watching Yellowstone isn’t what you’ve paid the streaming service and fibre provider. It’s also what you gave up doing in the 20 hours it took you to get through the first two series. Maybe hours of sleep were given up, an hour or two of shopping, a visit to the gym, cooking, whatever you didn’t do is what you’ve given up as your ‘next best’ choice.
Implicit costs
Dismissing implicit costs can avoid an uncomfortable feeling or unpopular decision. But it doesn’t reduce the cost. There could even be some ‘irregular and wasteful expenditure’ of personal or company time, effort and attention going on.
We all have things we’re not good at. Like the kid who hates Maths; or the runner who’s forced to swim lengths. It’s horrible and difficult and exhausting. It also sucks up finite resources that could be used to do something else well. Yes, there are times to just ‘suck it up’ and get through things, but be sure to factor in the implicit costs of doing so.
How can we help you?
Let me end off with a sales pitch and a few provocative thoughts.
I specialise in communication strategy and implementation, so creating and distributing content is what we do. If you’re doing it yourself and think that maybe you should be spending that time doing something else, speak to me.
With regards to the current communications choices you have made, what are the next best options that you have given up in terms of messaging, media, spokespeople, strategic alliances, are you directing your messaging where it could have the most impact?
Sometimes it takes a new perspective to see what of what could be instead is.
