The parable of the comb-over

How to avoid failing gradually

Hi all,

Welcome to the sixth edition of Signals & Stories, where we explore the signals that lead to better decisions—in life and business.

If you have any thoughts or feedback on the articles, feel free to send me a note or leave a comment on the Substack website.

Thank you very much for reading, and I hope you have a good start to the week.

—Brendan

📖 The comb-over

One morning Gary noticed it, his hair beginning to thin at the temples.

Or was it? Perhaps it was just stress—or the lighting. Months later it grew a bit worse. His blonde hair was balding in its cruel, male-patterned way. After some trial and error, he discovered that carefully parting his hair to the side helped. Not a big deal.

Over the days, months and years, millimeter by millimeter his bald spot increased in width. And so Gary’s side part slowly inched its way further to the side of his head.

By the time he was in his 50s, Gary had a severe comb-over, one that reminded his son of (former) Senator Carl Levin’s:

What happened? As Gary slowly aged, his standards for “acceptable hair” also slowly eroded. 20 year-old Gary would have nearly passed out if he saw how his hair looked today. But like a frog thrown into warm water that slowly rises to a boil, he did not notice things gradually getting worse until it was, in his son’s words, a “disaster”.

🧠 The unbearable power of gradualness

Here is the lesson the comb-over teaches us: gradual changes can be unnoticeable day-by-day, but massive over the years. Because gradual changes can easily go undetected, they can be sneakily beneficial when those changes are positive… and sneakily dangerous when they’re negative.

The Roman Empire did not suddenly collapse; it gradually atrophied over 200+ years. Sears, the largest retailer in the world in 1960s and 1970s, did not implode; it slowly and painfully unwound itself over decades. A dramatic fall from grace seems scarier, but in some ways failing gradually is worse because of 1) how difficult it is to see while it happens and 2) how much time it wastes.

Consider the thousands of people who hit the gym on January 1st, resolute to nurture a daily gym habit. They then experience the bleakness of Planet Fitness at 6:30 AM, with its nausea-inducing bright purple interior, and many drift to only 4 days per week. The responsibilities of work remain relentless, and after a few more months, many then drift back to where they were on December 31st. Just like those who wear a comb-over, these fitness hopefuls did intend for this end result; they just gradually drifted there.

That is a perfect introduction to this week’s signal, a concept from systems thinking called drifting goals. This happens when an organization or individual gradually drifts away from its original goal and ends-up way off course.

For example, no government (I hope) explicitly aims to accumulate too much debt. Instead, many drift there. When a government faces a budget deficit one year (the problem), it can be easier to simply shift the goalpost (borrow more!) than make real, painful decisions to spend less and balance the budget. Once the goalpost-shifting habit is in place, the government gradually grows comfortable borrowing more and more from its future instead of solving the budget problem in the present. In the U.S., this pattern has contributed to a $34 trillion federal budget debt.

What’s interesting is that all forms of downward drift tend to follow this similar pattern. If I were to generalize it, it would look something like this:

1. The First Sign of Trouble: Everything is going swimmingly with your project until you encounter a small problem, obstacle or reversal of progress.

2. Easy Way Out: Instead of fixing the real problem, you agree (even sub-consciously) to set the bar for what’s acceptable (performance, deliverables, ethics, etc.) a little lower. Why? A lower bar is easier to reach! That “fixes” the problem more quickly and easily than actually solving it.

3. A Precedent is Set: Though well-intentioned—and it’s always “well-intentioned”—this lowering of standards inadvertently justifies lower aspirations for the future. Lower aspirations, in turn, incentivizes lower effort, leading to worse results and more problems.

4. Rinse and Repeat: To fix the new problems, it is tempting to… slightly lower standards (again). Over time, the habit calcifies, the cycle repeats, and you suffer a gradual, unnoticed decline in quality and/or effort.

Below represents this cycle in greater detail:

The takeaway: if you let your standards shift (even in a bit), unnoticeable, gradual changes can compound into substantial declines over time.

🛡️ Hold the line

The key to avoiding gradual downward drift is to “hold the line.” Though many people know this phrase from Toto’s catchy 1978 song of the same name, which I may or may not have attempted once in karaoke, the concept actually comes from military history. When an army was under attack, such as the vastly outmatched Greeks in the Battle of Thermopylae, soldiers were commanded to “hold the line” and maintain their position no matter what. Why? War has always been psychological. Holding the line incentivizes courage and resilience, while allowing soldiers the option to retreat enables the opposite.

To avoid drifting from your own individual or team goals, you must also hold the line. This means maintaining absolute standards, irrespective of past performance. You cannot shift the goalposts when you run into a challenge; you must stick with your original standards and push through as much as possible. Success at overcoming this challenge also fuels motivation to handle even tougher ones. Standards will rise and not fall. The improvement will also be gradual, making it equally hard to detect.

In the next addition of Signals & Stories, I’ll go into further detail about how it’s possible to “drift upward” (instead of downward), drawing insights from investor Paul Graham and professional lacrosse player Paul Rabil.

🪴📈 Sidebar from the Window Sill

Here is my roommate’s monstera (monster-a?) plant gradually growing an aerial root over the course of… 2 months. Each day, you couldn’t notice the root growing, but after I came back from a vacation I gawked in curiosity/mild disgust at this… horizontal (!) growth spurting out of the plant:

🎓 Further Reading

1. The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge: A management classic on how to develop “learning organizations”, teams that are best positioned to continually grow and achieve their objectives. Systems thinking is a key tenet to learning organizations.

Thanks for reading!

Signals & Stories is a newsletter about finding clearer signals that lead to better decisions—in life and business.

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—Brendan