The law of hidden costs
When driving drunk is an act of citizenship
"It's stupid not to wear a helmet when cycling: it doesn't cost anything and it can save a life." This is an increasingly common opinion on the subject, and it's defensible.
Here's another one: "Since we're all going to die one day, might as well be while cycling than shitting myself in a hospital bed." It's also defensible, but it's less convincing.
And here's another one, even less convincing but true in my opinion:
"Wearing a helmet when cycling can save a life, but it's not worth it. There are too many hidden costs associated with it."
Here are the hidden costs I'm thinking of:
Time spent putting on and taking off the helmet.
The maintenance, through a physical habit, of the feeling of external danger linked to cycling.
The bulkiness of the helmet.
The mental load associated with carrying a helmet around: the fear of forgetting it, etc.
The decline in interest in cycling due to the inconvenience of wearing a helmet.
In the debates I've had, these arguments failed to convince my friends. Indeed, the aforementioned costs are difficult to measure, while the benefit (a life saved) is measurable.
The debate becomes interesting when we actually bring in measurements and statistics. Some studies seem to indicate that wearing a helmet does not significantly reduce mortality, but like Rousseau, we're going to temporarily disregard the facts to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Indeed, it's very probable, even obvious, that in the event of an accident, wearing a helmet reduces mortality. Too many factors come into play in more general studies, which explains their counterintuitive conclusions.
While sparing you the various hypotheses mentioned in this spreadsheet, it would seem that, all things being equal, you gain about 16 seconds of life per trip by wearing a helmet. Everyone can draw their own conclusions, but for my part, I am willing to lose 30 seconds of my life to live more freely and not bother with a helmet. Of course, it would take me more time to buy it, put it on and take it off than it would save me, which in itself is already a deal-breaker, but that's not even the heart of the problem: I find it hard to combine a form of carefree attitude, necessary for happiness, with a mindset so cautious that it pushes me to wear a helmet to save 16 seconds of life. For me, that's the overriding hidden cost.
A similar calculation can be made for the 80 km/h speed limit on roads, the covid lockdowns, etc...
Nowadays, we try to rationalize everything, to reduce measurable risks, without ever taking into account those that are not. However, pusillanimity is a real and serious risk, which is favored by wearing a helmet on a bicycle, refraining from talking to strangers (even if they offer candy), putting on a sweater when you go outside and it's cold... But it's not measurable, so it's always neglected.
Some examples in business
This phenomenon is very similar to the streetlight effect. It is widespread in almost all dimensions of a business: let's imagine, to talk about marketing, that to increase the visit rate of my company's website (a measurable metric), I change the tone of our newsletter to make it more artificially personal, more sales-oriented, etc... We might manage to improve this metric, but probably at the cost of a legitimate decline in trust from readers and a subsequent drop in sales, which are much more obscure.
Now, when managing “human resources”. It's always good to "process" everything, in order to reduce the error rate and depend less on the individual performance of employees. But we rarely think about the effects of such a company policy on employee engagement and subsequent turnover. If an employee feels that we want to make them replaceable and that we have limited confidence in their ability to do their job, they are unlikely to be willing to stay for long and be effective.
In engineering school, a mechanics professor who had worked for 20 years at Renault told me, about lean manufacturing that we were studying: "I'm not at all convinced by this practice. Maybe the sub-optimal layout of the production lines allows operators to move around the factory a bit and take advantage of it to rest. We don't know if it’s not bad for a company to optimize everything, all things considered."
In management information systems
In IT, we often see similar paradoxes. Complete digitization seems to improve efficiency, but it can damage employee communication. With efficient messaging systems and easy access to data, employees have fewer reasons to talk in person. So much communication is lost in the process!
The perverse effects of "rights" in software
The most insidious problem, I think, often lies in a seemingly small detail of ERP systems: access rights.
The typical thinking goes like this: "Employee X is in role Y, they don't need to access menu Z, which is for employees in role W. They might break things or steal data. And anyway, it's not their job."
That's understandable, and sometimes it's even necessary. For instance, it's perfectly reasonable that an employee shouldn't see their colleagues' pay slips.
However, more often than not, this restrictive approach causes more harm than good.
Firstly, if the ERP system is built well, and the support team is on the ball, it's virtually impossible to "break everything." Regular backups ensure that, in a worst-case scenario, we'd only lose a few hours' worth of data entry. That's a cost of maybe tens of thousands of euros at most, nowhere near the millions an employee could cause by physically sabotaging production. It's actually kind of strange that the physical machinery is often left more accessible than the highly restricted ERP access.
Secondly, there's a real disconnect between the message leaders often send and the way they act. On one hand, they'll give these empowering, motivational speeches, saying "Be proactive, give us your ideas, I trust you, drive the company forward!" On the other, these very same leaders implement restrictions that shout: "Stay in your lane, don't touch that, I don't trust you enough to give you these accesses." When words and actions clash like that, people will believe the actions. If ERP access is being used as a safety net, then either there’s a problem of trust from the top, or you have a weak team. Either way, it's a human or organizational issue, not an IT one.
Driving drunk: an act of citizenship
I'm reaching the heights of hypocrisy here, because I've never really drunk alcohol and don't plan to start anytime soon.
However, we can imagine the following situation: you are in a little party with your friends and the atmosphere is great. It would be even better with 2-3 more drinks. Only, you are afraid of having an accident on the way home, if you drink too much. So you stop there. The obvious cost (dying in a car accident) makes you forget the hidden benefit (having a very good time with your friends).
This last example was perhaps not necessary, but it justifies the subtitle of this post, which I like.