It is a truth somewhat acknowledged, that a corporate employee who wants to advance their career , must follow the path of least resistance.
Going with the flow, not challenging status quo, staying a long period in the same role, being patient and not personally invested, giving comfort to managers, and showing the right dose of sycophancy, are usually good indicators of a bright future up the ladder in certain institutions.
But why is that? Is it particularly prominent in the financial system? Surely in order for an industry to thrive, it means that there needs to be innovators, thought leaders, strong willed drivers of change, deep thinkers and more?
Well, before zooming in the financial industry, let’s take a step back.
In physics, the Principle of Least Action (also known as the Principle of Stationary Action) is a foundational concept. It states (to simplify) that the path taken by a physical system between two states is the one for which a certain quantity called the “action” is minimized (or more precisely, made stationary — meaning it could be a minimum, maximum, or saddle point).
Does that mean that inherently to our nanoscopic components, Nature favors the least possible effort?
In behavioural science, research suggests that humans could be hard-wired to take the easiest route.
In a paper published in eLife called “Perceptual decisions are biased by the cost to act” Nobuhiro Hagura, Patrick Haggard, and Jorn Diedrichsen had 52 participants complete tests to explore how they make decisions.
These participants had to judge the direction of moving dots on a screen by using handles in their hands. When a load was added to one handle, their judgments became biased, leading them to prefer the easier response, such as judging the dots as moving in the opposite direction of the heavier handle. Notably, they were unaware of the extra weight, as their motor system adapted automatically, altering their perception. The researcher found that when they asked the participants to make the decision verbally instead of the handles, they still chose the easiest way to interpret the visual input.
Another paper (Shenhav and al, “The Relationship Between Intertemporal Choice and Following the Path of Least Resistance Across Choices, Preferences, and Beliefs”) investigates how a person’s preference for immediate versus delayed rewards (intertemporal choice) predicts their tendency to make less reflective, more automatic decisions across different life domains.
The research examines how people’s preference for smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones (temporal discounting) correlates with impulsiveness in various aspects of life. Authors’ findings are that “steeper discounters” exhibit more impulsive behaviors, relying on quick, automatic responses rather than reflective thinking, leading to suboptimal choices in gambling and ineffective planning. They also prefer simpler information, often using straightforward social media and news sources, and have less complex beliefs about human behavior and the world. Overall, more impulsive individuals show a tendency toward less effortful thinking and simpler explanations.
There is more research in this field from behavioural and neuroscience academics, that either finds humans prefer the path of least resistance, or that our brain’s preference for immediate reward could lead us to over-prefer simplicity to more effort necessitating thinking.
How does that translate in the corporate world? In the financial industry?
There are two particular areas where I would say this tendency of favouring the easy path is apparent: i) The strong preference of simplicity over complexity, even when the situation is complex; ii) The prevalence of not wanting to take difficult decisions.
The preference for over-simplifying and its dangers
Since I started working in the corporate world, I was surprised by the prevalence of these types of messages: “Less is more”, “Take them to the zoo”, “Keep it simple”.
Or the more specific “We have only two minutes to brief the committee”, or “It needs to be in one slide”, or the more rare (especially in the context of a mathematical field) “Do not mention any greek letter of any kind”, or the ominous “Give me one number”.
But sometimes, in order to understand a complex product, an interconnected risk, a deeply technical issues, it is impossible to dumb it down to one slide, one punch line or a two minute brief.
There is a difference between becoming an educator who specialises in vulgarisation, and simplifying high expertise topics for the general public, and being a technical expert in a firm reporting to executives whose role is to make decisions on complex activities.
A recent example I have seen on this was Artificial Intelligence, where a number of people in many firms refused to even engage five years ago stating that it was too far ahead, too complicated and for engineers to deal with, losing precious time to understand the risks and opportunity of this technology until they had to, because everyone else was.
Complexity has long been underappreciated, and those who excel at navigating it are increasingly overlooked in the workplace. In many large institutions, a significant portion of the workforce may not have been encouraged to engage deeply with complex issues, may not be fully equipped to do so, or may consciously choose to focus on following top down guidance and simpler tasks. As a result, only a small group tends to actively engage with complexity within large organisations.
Of course, building overcomplicated processes, difficult to understand and explain metrics, and opaque communications is not desirable. Nor is desirable engaging in convoluted activities of unmanageable sizes and technical components.
What is worth though focusing on here is that some sectors, such as the financial system, are inherently complex, contain many interlinkages, and the involved mechanics and infrastructures that make the whole thing work are not simple.
So decision makers desiring only a superficial level discussions could likely end up making the wrong decisions because of blind spots that could have been easily identified, if the two-slides limit of a deck was five, or if the expert had 30min instead of two.
On this topic I found one related paper by Michael Lissack, called “Don’t Be Addicted: The Oft-Overlooked Dangers of Simplification”.
The paper main thesis is that simplification carries a significant risk of failure, as it only works to a certain extent and can lead to mistakes when fitting information into sound bites or keywords. While simplification can be effective, it doesn’t always succeed, and when it fails, it does so dramatically. The paper discusses the limitations of simplification in design, the cognitive reasons behind our design choices, and offers practical techniques to resist its allure.
Another paper, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article “Taming Complexity”, argues that complexity in business is often misunderstood and unfairly criticized for its cognitive demands and lack of transparency. However, it highlights that complexity can offer significant advantages, particularly in dynamic and uncertain environments where adaptability and resilience are key.
HBR outlines that complex systems, with the interconnected and diversity nature of its elements, enhance organizational resilience by providing multiple fallback options and adaptability, promote innovation and learning, and make systems harder to imitate. And while complexity can lead to inefficiency and difficulty in oversight, the authors suggest managing rather than minimizing it. They conclude with a practical guidance that organizations should carefully balance the costs and benefits of complexity, making it a strategic asset for long-term performance and innovation.
I could not have said it better.
The reluctance to engage on difficult decisions
The other main area where the path of least resistance seems to prevail in the corporate world, and in particular in the financial system, is the preference to stay away from difficult decisions, or even to have difficult conversations.
Blending personal and others’ anecdotes, all the following examples are symptomatic of the issue:
- Manager asking employee to stop coming to them with problems (even when said employee is proposing a solution and especially when that solution involves a difficult decision).
- Board or committees or senior officers blaming the technical expert for not being clear (or making fun of them) when they themselves fail to understand or have difficulty due to lack of technical skills.
- Financial industry press, internal or external comms sometimes preferring simple well-rehearsed messages to innovative thoughtful pieces.
- A lot of focus on easy to understand roles with perceived wealth and prestige (e.g. traders, portfolio managers), and very little focus on highly technical staff who deal with complexity on a daily basis (engineers, quantitative analysts, risk managers).
- Boards or committees that decide to keep status quo because it is easier.
- A culture of avoidance to escalate complex issues that need decision. Or, if escalated, sometimes blaming the messenger.
The list of circumstantial evidence can be long, with examples or variations regularly happening in many firms, even if on average some of these firms could have a good and balanced culture.
What is behind this reluctance to engage with and make hard decisions?
In another Harvard Business Review article “Leaders, Stop Avoiding Hard Decisions”, the authors highlights a common issue: many leaders postpone tough decisions to avoid upsetting others or risking their own status.
This lack of decision-making, per the article, often leads to greater damage than the potential fallout they were avoiding (although I would argue the damage to their career will be limited. We often witness executives or senior staff for notorious firms that have failed, being hired at more senior roles at other firms) .
The HBR article goes on to note that complexity and difficulty in decision-making only intensify as leaders move up the rank, and that a ten-year study of 2,700 leaders showed that 57% of new executives found decisions significantly more complex and difficult than anticipated. (My view here is that this confirms that a majority of promotion favours those who avoid having to make hard decisions).
Authors highlight that leaders frequently justify procrastinating on difficult choices with sophisticated reasoning, but such delays tend to compound issues over time. They also discuss that deferring tough calls can damage morale, slow progress, and cause strategic drift. As leaders become more senior, their decisions have broader effects and the stakes get higher. The article urges leaders to recognize that delaying difficult decisions rarely produces better outcomes. Instead, leaders should cultivate decisiveness, accept the inherent discomfort, and address hard issues promptly to minimize harm and demonstrate effective leadership.
In summary, the HBR article and other research on the topic largely concludes that avoiding hard decisions is more damaging than facing them head-on. However, the reality is that in normal times, avoiding or delaying hard decisions allows aspiring executives not to ruffle any feathers, and be seen as holding the fort solidly. This in turn facilitate promotion and more responsibility, whilst hiding the fact that those not making any decisions are the least equiped to deal with tough calls in times of stress.
It’s worth remembering the fundamental difference between the Principle of Least Action (as a formal rule in physics) and the path of least resistance (as a behavioral metaphor): both reflect how systems tend to evolve toward low-cost configurations, but in physics, complex optimization (minimizing energy or action, maximizing efficiency) takes place to achieve such result.
So, at the quantum particle level, some effort is made. And similarly, it should be at the decision-making level.
Sources:
3. Shenhav, Amitai and Rand, David G. and Greene, Joshua D., The Relationship Between Intertemporal Choice and Following the Path of Least Resistance Across Choices, Preferences, and Beliefs (December 16, 2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2724547 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2724547
4. Don’t Be Addicted: The Oft-Overlooked Dangers of Simplification – ScienceDirect
6. Leaders, Stop Avoiding Hard Decisions
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