“Little vignette. During the dotcom bubble when our company stock was flying while we rushed crap out the door just to be able to book the revenue, I overheard from my cube one of the sales guys ask: “How is it possible customers go along with this and we still get paid?” to which, our GM very loudly proclaimed: “We’ve worked very hard and earned it!”. This will stick with me forever. The reason being at the time he absolutely believed it 100% … and so did I. Our GM was a very sharp guy. So how did he get sucked in? How did I get sucked in? Took me a bit, but I figured it out: It’s possible to have your ego get so pumped up that it completely destroys all logic and common sense. So, let me ask the bulls, AFTER all that you can see laid out before you (San Diego, Phoenix, Miami, Las Vegas, Shanghai, HK, Spain, Ireland, Greece, blah-blah-blah), how can you think this will end differently for you? Have your heads really become that enormous? (PS. Homer wrote a nice little volume about this.)”
- chubster at VREAA 6 Nov 2011 2:44pm
Spot on regarding “can’t happen to me” psychology.
Amazing, isn’t it?
Completely relevant to why so many Vancouver owners/buyers see the dots but don’t connect them.
- vreaa
Connecting the dots involves some abstract thinking. Sorry to say that isn’t taught much in schools these days. That’s not fair: it is taught very well to those who care to listen.
Speaking of critical thinking, I really enjoy Umair Haque’s work:
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/
And he has a great Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/#!/umairh
Well said and spot on.
One of my pet sayings is,”sometimes the hardest thing i do is nothing”.
It means when people do things that you know are stupid, you dont also have to be stupid.
But that also means that you have to have the courage, the belief and base that on realistic facts.
In the last few days a property i like came on the market where im looking in BC. (Not Vancouver). They are asking 35% – 40% too much.
If somebody is tupid enough to pay them that, then more fool the buyer.
IMHO the property will sit for 6-8 months with very little interest.
Relevant to the topic:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45221933/ns/business-us_business/#.Trr_T0Mg_lY