Why It’s a Bad Time to be a Conservative
All of us humans, both individually and collectively, have to strike some reasonable balance between doing what we’ve done before (safe but boring) and trying something new (exciting but risky).
And when considering these two alternatives, of course, doing what we’ve done before generally wins. Because we know that what’s been done before has worked. And because we also know that lots of things don’t work; in fact, many things fail spectacularly. And so, very wisely, we generally stick with things that have been shown to work.
George Santayana nicely summed up this wisdom for us back in 1906:
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained… infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
In other words, if we can’t remember what worked and what didn’t before, then we’re likely to repeat the stuff that didn’t work — with equally disappointing and often disastrous results.
This tendency to repeat what has worked before is well known in business. And, as Santayana pointed out, it’s generally a good thing. But at times it can hold back progress. This is one reason why founder Jeff…
