Principle:
proactively minimize surprise.
[2024-04-16]
Surprise minimization is a simple but surprisingly powerful concept. In the words of Charlie Munger, “Take a simple idea and take it seriously.“
- Proactively minimize the negative surprise people experience working or living with you. Minimizing surprise increases predictability. Enabling others to predict future outcomes with superior accuracy will make them more effective, and outcome-oriented folks will appreciate you for that. Further, predictability increases the sense of stability others feel in the face of change. Those driven by a desire for security will appreciate you for that as well.
- Request those who report to you to minimize the surprise you experience from them. Exemplary direct reports never surprise to the downside because they know that that could leave you in a difficult position when it comes to achieving larger goals. They may go for hard problems and come up short but never with a last moment letdown. Proactive status updates along the way allow for your probability estimates to stay well-calibrated, and for positive adjustments to be made early, when they have the greatest chance of impact.
- In conversations and interviews, always inquire about the surprises others have encountered. Surprising information is the most valuable data. Surprise is a sure sign that you’re receiving out-of-distribution data which will enable the largest possible update to your world model.
Fun Corollaries
- Surprise minimization taken to the limit equals predicting the future.
- Inversion: maximize surprise to confuse your enemies. >:)
- Surprize minimization —> swarm behavior.