Why do orchestras stick with bad decisions?
I was once working with an orchestra on a big digital project and as part of it, we managed to arrange for a bit of a rebrand at no extra cost. The orchestra had made a strong commitment to accessibility, and the designers pointed out that the existing brand colours were not accessible and could be improved easily. However, the orchestra decided not to change them because they had previously spent money on a focus group to choose the old colours.
Despite being presented with a better option at zero extra cost that helped them achieve their goals, they refused to change and stuck with their bad decision. Why? One answer is the “Sunk Cost Fallacy”.
The Sunk Cost Fallacy is a cognitive bias where a person or organisation continues with a strategy or endeavour because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandoning it would be more beneficial. Although we normally think of “Sunk Costs” in terms of economics (a cost that has already been incurred that can’t be recovered), it can also be time and effort. And it sneaks into our everyday life more than you expect.
Picture this. You’ve gone to the cinema and paid £10 to watch a film. 15 minutes in, you realise the film is terrible. It keeps getting worse and worse and by 45 minutes you’re hating every second of being there and would rather be doing your tax return. So, what do you? If you left halfway through, you would have had a better time. The £10 is gone, it’s a sunk cost, so financially it makes no difference if you stay or go. But you sit there for another hour and watch the rest of it for the sole reason you’ve spent £10.
This isn’t just restricted to money. Carrying on with the idea of films, imagine the next week you decide to stay in and watch a film on Netflix. The same thing happens again, you’ve chosen an absolute stinker of a film and after an hour you’re totally fed up. You could turn the TV off at any moment or find something else to watch in seconds, but, because you’re halfway through and you’ve already spent an hour watching it, you think you should finish it.
The more you think about sunk cost fallacies, the more you see them everywhere. Government projects are a great example of this. Sticking with projects that go many times over budget, even though the return no longer justifies the cost.
In the classical music world, we see them a lot. For example, many orchestras have created their own digital platforms for online concerts which, by their nature, struggle to get viewers. Those orchestras would have greater results by moving their content to YouTube but they decide not to because they have invested time and effort into building the platform.
The list goes on. Continuing with a concert program that isn’t selling, even though changing the repertoire would sell more tickets. Sticking with a bad marketing campaign that isn’t bringing in results. Not changing ineffective software because it’s already been paid for. Examples of sunk cost fallacies often sneak into our daily lives, preventing us from making good decisions and tying us to bad ones.
Going back to the orchestra at the start of this blog, there was another reason they stuck with their bad decision of inaccessible brand colours. The previous rebrand was only taken a few years ago. “What would people think if we changed our brand again?”. “We should stick with our previous decision”. This is an example of commitment bias.
Commitment bias (or escalation of commitment) is where we stick to our past behaviours or decisions (especially those exhibited publicly), even if doing so isn’t favourable to us now.
We see this a lot with politicians all the time. They take a certain stance on an issue, and then new evidence comes to light saying the opposite, but they find it difficult to walk back their original statement out of fear of looking hypocritical or inconsistent.
The “public” nature of commitment bias is incredibly powerful. Even if those decisions or decisions are only expressed internally, they are still public. This often leads orchestras to continue with the same type of decisions as taking a different approach would show that they have changed their mind to either their internal team or the public.
Biases are a hard thing to overcome. Sadly, there is no easy takeaway or solution that can fix or prevent either of these 2 cognitive biases. But, awareness goes a long way to improving things. By knowing about these 2 examples it can help us spot patterns of irrational behaviour in ourselves and our teams, and help us from sticking with bad decisions.
As a final thought, if you’ve got to the end of this blog is it because you’ve enjoyed it, or is it another case of sunk cost fallacy and you should have quit reading ages ago and done something else?
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