Three Laws of Western Culture in the 20th Century

? "Murphy's Law" is a commonly used slang term in the Western world. Together with "Parkinson's Law" and "Peter's Principle", it is known as the three major inventions of Western culture in the twentieth century.

In 1949, an engineer named Edward Morphy, a captain in the U.S. Air Force, made a casual joke to one of his unlucky colleagues: If something is likely to be done wrong, let him do it. It will definitely get worse. The originally innocent joke did not have a deep meaning, it just expressed the helplessness brought by bad luck. Maybe there are too many unlucky people in this world, or maybe people will always be there. Because of making such mistakes, this sentence was quickly spread, and finally it was interpreted as: If something bad is possible, no matter how small the possibility is, it will always happen and cause the greatest possible loss.

In mathematical statistics, there is an important statistical rule: assuming that the probability of an unexpected event occurring in an experiment (activity) is p (pgt; 0), then there will be at least one occurrence in n experiments (activities) The probability of occurrence is P=1-(1-p)n. It can be seen that when the number of experiments n tends to infinity, pn will increasingly tend to 1, which becomes an inevitable event. Applied to safety management, he pointed out: When doing anything, if there is an objectively wrong approach, or there is a possibility of some kind of accident, no matter how small the possibility is, when you do it repeatedly, When something happens, an accident will always happen at some point. That is to say, as long as the possibility of an accident exists, no matter how small the possibility is, the accident will happen sooner or later.

Murphy's Law mainly includes. Four aspects:

Nothing is as simple as it seems;

Everything will take longer than you expect;

Things that will go wrong Something will always go wrong;

If you are worried about something happening, then it is more likely to happen.

The basic content of "Murphy's Law" is "Everything that can go wrong will. "There is a high probability that something will go wrong" means that as long as any event has a probability greater than zero, it cannot be assumed that it will not happen.

Prevention methods

1. Try to avoid Emotional. To control your emotions and resist worries, you can follow the following four tips:

Follow the correct solution;

Collect as much information as possible to find out what is causing you troubles;

Weigh the importance of the information and find ways to deal with it;

Observe whether things are going smoothly

2. Don’t do something impulsively. If there is nothing more important than taking immediate action, do it immediately.

3. When you are under too much pressure, take a break.

4. In order to be realistic, don’t bother to check it again.

5. Find solutions step by step from the process of what happened, and don’t make any judgments.

6. Compare it with your own wishes to see if the decision you make goes against your will.

Functional meaning: warning function

Murphy’s Law is an objective existence. To prevent the possible negative consequences of Murphy's Law in business management, daily work and life, we must start from various factors such as behavior, technology, mechanism, environment, etc., and the ideological and psychological attention to it must undoubtedly be given top priority.

Prevent small risks from happening. If small hidden dangers are not eliminated, they may expand and grow, and the probability of causing accidents will gradually increase. This is especially scary for huge, complex technical systems.

Be optimistic about the pressure and keep a calm mind. Being mentally disturbed due to too much stress is one of the most common causes of tragedy.

Stay upright and do not take chances. Luck psychology is a psychology that does not want to follow objective laws, but only relies on chance or luck and other accidental factors to achieve success or avoid disasters.

It makes people opportunistic, knowingly, irrespective of cause and effect, unruly, lazy, and easy to take shortcuts. Because it only relies on accidental factors, it necessarily does not follow the laws of cause and effect, and despises or indulges hidden dangers. In reality, it often backfires as predicted by Murphy's Law.

Reference significance

There is a certain basis in psychology, that is, negative psychological cues will have adverse effects on people's mentality and behavior. To break the "curse" of Murphy's Law, we must have firm self-confidence, a stable mentality, positive psychological suggestions, express in affirmative language, and adopt a zero-tolerance strategy for negative emotions or bad thoughts such as inferiority complex. Dismiss immediately. Even if you encounter setbacks, you must have the awareness to "do your best in people and affairs and obey fate", give full play to your potential and face it bravely, and always face life with a positive and sunny attitude.

Columbia Disaster

In 2003, when the U.S. space shuttle Columbia was about to return to the ground, an accident occurred over central Texas, resulting in the death of six people on board the space shuttle. All astronauts died, including Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut in space. The accident also fully confirmed Murphy's Law - it is inevitable for such a complex system to have an accident. Either today or tomorrow, it is reasonable for an accident to occur. After this major accident, people began to look for the cause of the accident to prevent a similar situation from happening next time. Most people understood this and believed that no country would give up the entire aerospace industry just because of a space accident. . The probability of such a disaster is actually the same as the probability of winning the lottery. Although both are very small, if you don't pay attention to clearing blind corners and eliminating unsafe hidden dangers, then the probability of accidents will add up, and in the end it will definitely Have a big explosion.

"Parkinson's Law" is another name for "big business disease", "officialdom disease" and "organizational paralysis". It comes from the title of the book "Parkinson's Law" published by the famous British historian, Northgood Parkinson in 1958. It is often used by people to explain the causes and consequences of staff expansion in organizations or official circles.

To put it simply, it is this:

Within an organization, a mediocre or even incompetent leader or official generally has these three ways out.

The first way out is to take the initiative to apply to leave this position, which means to give up the position to those who are qualified and capable.

The second way out is to let a relatively capable person help you to be competent at the job.

The third way is to use two people with a lower level than yourself, that is, people who are more obedient and have average abilities, as your assistants.

Looking at it one by one, this first way out is impossible to take. Because if you do that, you will lose a lot of power, or even lose your power. Many people simply don't want to do it.

As for the second path, it cannot be taken. That capable person will have a high chance of becoming his opponent in the future.

It seems that only the third way is the most suitable. The result is that two assistants with mediocre abilities share the work of this incompetent person, and he himself can still be aloof and issue some orders, and the people below will listen. And the people below will not pose any threat to his power.

At the same time, two mediocre assistants, although they do not have much ability, will follow their example and find two more incompetent assistants for themselves.

By analogy, a management system or system that appears to be bloated, overstaffed, buck-passing, and extremely inefficient is formed.

The conclusion is: In the administrative management within the organization, the administrative agencies will continue to increase like a pyramid structure. The administrative staff within the organization will continue to expand. On the surface, everyone seems very busy, but the organizational efficiency is getting lower and lower.

What is said above is very simple. In fact, this law has many specific laws and knowledge. For example, "As long as there is still time, the work will continue to expand until all the time is used up" and so on.

The Peter Principle is a conclusion reached by American scholar Dr. Lawrence Peter after studying phenomena related to organizational personnel promotion. In various organizations, employees are often promoted to incompetent status because they are used to promoting competent people at a certain level. Peter's Principle is sometimes called the "climbing" theory.

This phenomenon is common in real life: a competent professor becomes incompetent after being promoted to university president; an excellent athlete is promoted to an official in charge of sports, resulting in inaction. For an organization, once a considerable number of people are pushed to the level of incompetence, it will cause the organization to be overstaffed and inefficient, leading to mediocrity and stagnation. Promoting employees to a position where they cannot fully utilize their talents is not a reward for themselves, but a loss for the organization.

For an organization, once a considerable number of employees are pushed to the point of being incompetent, it will cause the organization to be bloated and inefficient, leading to mediocre people standing out and development stagnating. Therefore, this requires changing the "contribution-based" promotion mechanism. Just because a person does a good job at one job level, it does not infer that he or she will be qualified for a higher-level position. It is necessary to establish a scientific and reasonable personnel selection and employment mechanism, objectively evaluate the ability and level of each employee, and arrange them into competent positions.

Do not use job promotion as the main way to reward employees. It is necessary to establish a more effective reward mechanism and use salary increases, vacations, etc. as rewards. Sometimes, when an employee is promoted to a position where he cannot fully utilize his talents, it is not only a reward for the employee, but also a loss for the company.

"15% of a person's success depends on knowledge, and the remaining 85% depends on excellent interpersonal relationships, handling skills and emotional intelligence." Carnegie believes that whether it is a man or a woman, if he can put interpersonal relationships Handled properly, people with high emotional intelligence are often the ones.