Albert O. Hirschman
Walk out, or speak up
The easier the exit, the fewer the complaints
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Harvard University Press, 1970)
Unhappy with something, people count two options: leave, or put up with it. Where the third one went.
What actually happened?
Hirschman watched the railways in Nigeria. They were slow and they lost freight, and lorries took the traffic away. The textbook says competition of that kind forces the railway to improve. What happened was the reverse: the shippers who cared most about arriving on time left first, and they were exactly the people who would have complained, made noise and forced the railway to fix itself. The deficit was covered from public funds, so departures cost nothing, and the railway went quietly on declining.
Dissatisfaction has two ways out
Faced with something getting worse, people do one of two things. Exit: switch supplier, resign, stop buying. Voice: stay put, say what is wrong, try to get it changed. Economics studies the first, politics the second, and you meet both in one week.
The food got worse. You can find another place, or call the owner over. Most people quietly find another place.
An easy exit kills voice first
The two doors compete for the same people. The better the exit, the less anyone bothers with voice, and the first to go are the fussiest, so nobody left behind complains. The thing declining loses its one signal that it is declining.
Your most demanding customers stop renewing and stop complaining. On the report it is a few missing names.
One kind of monopoly needs you to leave
He called it the lazy monopolist. It does not fear a competitor, it wants one: the difficult customers are taken off its hands and it keeps the quiet ones, so life is easier than it was with no competition at all.
A private school opens nearby, the parents who care most move their children, and the state school gets peaceful.
Loyalty holds you there long enough to speak
Loyalty is not obedience. It raises the cost of leaving, so you stay while there is still time to change something, which is what makes voice worth using. Its dark side: where you cannot leave and nobody listens, what is left is capture.
Whoever has been there eight years is least willing to go and most likely to speak, provided speaking is taken seriously.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: a place that disappoints you, and the only sum you keep redoing is stay or go.
Ask first: have I actually used voice? If nobody would listen, what is the case for staying?
Where it goes wrong: read as an argument never to leave. He wanted both tools available, not voice ranked above exit.
Lines to keep
The easier a place is to leave, the less anyone says.
The first to go are the ones who would have complained.
Competition does not always improve things. It can remove the complaints.
Same situation, other people are asking
By the time anything reaches me it has been sanded down.I said I wanted honesty and the room went quiet.The people who used to push back have all left.Only good news reaches me · all 3 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.