GOT and the Sunk Cost Fallacy

Six years ago, the final season of Game of Thrones had me in a chokehold. I had committed 9 years to this show. I read all of the books by GRRM. I was posting theories online and reading character analyses on Reddit.

I was invested.

And then the final episode aired.

And I was livid. The ending was horrible.

IYKYK.

This was LOST all over again. You would think I would have learned my lesson.

Here’s the thing: I knew about halfway through season eight that this was going downhill fast. I knew the ending was going to be disappointing.

So why did I keep watching?

This, boys and girls, is what we call The Sunk Cost Fallacy.

The sunk cost fallacy is when we stick with something because we have already invested time and money into it, even if it’s clearly not working.

We see this all the time in risk management. It sounds like this:

“We’ve always done it this way.”

It doesn’t matter what “this way” is. It only matters that it’s the way you’ve always done it.

This will be one of your biggest challenges as a risk management professional, because a large part of your job will be influencing behavior, and changing behavior is hard.

Maybe it’s a broker you’re no longer happy with. Maybe it’s a TPA that has been non responsive. Maybe it’s an ergonomic program that exists on paper, but isn’t actually being implemented. Sometimes the change feels scary, because it feels like an admission that we were wrong.

But change is inevitable in any program. Conditions change, budgets change, organizational goals change, risk exposures change, so OF COURSE you should anticipate that components of your risk management program will change. There are no solutions that work forever.

So if your risk management program is feeling like the last season of GOT, just remember you can change the channel at any time.