Should you go without a plan B?

plan-aI’ve written before about the famous story of Hernen Cortes, the Spanish explorer.  The story goes that when he landed on the beaches of Mexico, hopelessly outnumbered against the vast Aztec army, he ordered his ships to be burnt so his men knew that failure was not an option.

There may be some doubts about the validity of the story, but it’s used to underline the hypothesis that having a fallback option, whilst undoubtedly well intentioned, can result in us failing to commit to plan A.

Failing to commit

This was the finding of a recent study conducted by researchers from Wisconsin School of Business.  The research saw a number of experiments conducted to measure the impact having a backup plan has on our commitment to our plan A.

On a number of tasks, the study found that participants who had a plan B in place achieved lower performance levels than those with no backup plan.  When the researchers delved deeper, they found that the presence of a backup typically correlated with a reduced desire to succeed.

The authors aren’t advocating scrapping the backup entirely so much as they are hoping that we will better understand the costs that having one might incur.  Some circumstances may warrant a backup plan, for instance if the outcome is more down to chance than effort, whilst others may see performance drop.

It’s a finding that was shared with a second study that was conducted earlier this year.  They suggest that having a backup plan not only results in us showing less commitment to our plan A, but the design of these backup strategies takes precious time away from our core plan.

We posit that backup plans change the way that a person pursues a goal, as well as the likelihood of achieving it, even if the backup plans are never used,” the authors say. “In some cases, backup plans are a safety net supporting goal pursuit; however, in other cases, they constitute an unnecessary expense that can undermine motivation to persist with a first-choice plan.”

So, maybe Cortes was onto something after all, and having that plan B to fallback on might not be a particularly wise course of action.

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