Why bad apples spoil your day

You’ve likely heard the adage “One bad apple spoils the bunch.” Have you ever asked why?

I took this photo in Maine years ago.

You’ve likely heard the adage “One bad apple spoils the bunch.” Have you ever asked why?

I did.

Imagine ranking a bushel of apples on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is rotten and 10 is perfection. After evaluating each apple on a bushel, you give all the apples a ranking between 8 and 10 and have an average ranking of 9.2. Adding anl apple that ranks 10 will increase your average, but the impact will be modest because it’s only slightly above your average. On the other hand, adding a bad apple with a 2 rank significantly impacts your average because the difference between your average and this bad apple is large.

I learned that a bad apple pulls down the rest because it’s typically further away from your current average. Moreover, that one bad apple often has a greater effect than a good apple because the good apple isn’t as far away from your average as the bad apple.

This principle applies to your business in three ways:

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1. People

Your bad apples have an…