In 2007 the UK’s then chancellor, Gordon Brown, sold half of his country’s gold reserves in a botched fire-sale that cost the country over $3 billion. By selling so much at the bottom of the market he had not only sold at a bad time but had driven the price down even further.
Contradiction: when bad systems ruin good people
Wherever large groups of people are managed in order to produce a product, serve a customer, or achieve some other strategic goal, management systems govern their interactions.
All these rules seem sensible at the time they are written, but the net impact is small inefficiencies that degrade the whole.
The game of Contradiction shows just how easily even simple interactions, which are poorly aligned, can result in irrational results.
Download the rules of the game here.
