Life Function

People are unusually programmable.

My work across many companies has convinced me that while we all are born with a free will and some sort of a conscience, we don't always grow up to tap this phenomenal gift.

For example, when companies want to achieve certain objectives, they just have to make sure that the incentive structure is so aligned as to ensure everyone is working towards a common goal. This thought is simple and probably enabling. However, in most cases, metrics are designed in a siloed way so as to maximize local interests without attention to the overall business cause. The examples are numerous - indeed, one has to only spend a day in any company/institution to gain several examples of this. The dealership where the agent is out to sell you the full set of accessories, the restaurant waiter who's quick to recommend the wine and slow to offer advice around what to avoid, the inventory planning groups that are quick to over procure, the enterprise sales teams that are quick to offer unsustainable discounts, etc.. The list is long and prevalent in our everyday lives.

Life Function

I believe the root cause of this is an inherent desire in each of us to maximize our "Life Function". Its inputs are many (food, money, state of relationships, state of people close to us, risks etc). In animals, we call it the "survival instinct". In humans, I think it goes well beyond the instinct to survive (though that is of course a core element). It expands to pleasure, happiness, ambition and perhaps even a little part of charity. People are always trying to increase the output of their Life Function. I suppose its similar to the the world's entropy in some sense. The easiest way to do that is to stay close to what one has been aligned against in terms of performance metrics. Hence the short term attention to one's local ecosystem vs. the broader view of the full ecosystem.

We are unusually "programmable". Unlike many physical phenomena, which take months to years to centuries to change, people have incredibly little change inertia. If we stand to increase our Life Function, we will usually not hesitate to change ourselves immediately. Given the presence of free will and conscience, its clear to me that our mind has a weight/value associated with all things human, and the "self" is greater than the truth.

The implications of what I have just stated are possibly startling, possibly saddening. But that's life, or should I say, the Life Function. But there are examples of people who's Life Function has arguably got modified. The process of how this happens is not clear to me. But the results are. There are many examples of "selfless" acts in our lives. There are many acts of valor. There are many people who have made sacrifices, often times for people they don't even know. Therefore it would seem to be that while we are unusually programmable, there are clearly events in our lives that can alter the otherwise predicable behavior of most people.

Looking up, looking ahead

Think of last 3-5 instances when you had to make conscious choices. Ask yourself what your rationale was. Those that ponder little will believe it to be, "what was good for me or my family/friends". Those that think a little more will likely come back with realization that their actions were trying to maximize a complex desire called Life Function.

Find out what the constants and variables are in your Life Function. Then ask yourselves what you would like it to be. The first step towards change is to know where you are and where you want to go. Good luck.