Back in my first years days as an engineering student I had to take a daily ride from Ratnapark to Pulchowk at the peak traffic hour. There always used to be a rush for a seat in a microbus. I struggled for the first couple of weeks. Then I discovered a pattern. The microbus makes a roundtrip from Sahid gate to Ratna Park back to Pulchowk. When I spotted it, I started waiting for the microbus in the Sahid gate instead. Couple of months went on smooth without much hassle and I was always guaranteed a seat as people gets down at Sahid gate too. Then people started noticing the pattern too. Then everyone followed the same pattern waiting for the microbus at Sahid gate. I was convinced we think in herds.
We have an attitude; if everyone else is doing it, it must be the thing to do. We demonstrate this syndrome in almost all the paths of our life, not just waiting for a microbus at Shahidgate. With this syndrome we will have a longer tail on shorter time on almost everywhere.
We find this pattern in companies too. In any country when a new sector is opened, there will be herds like in telecom, retail and aviation. Most of the time we are guided to the herd not by our instincts, rather by seeing what is going on with others. People might execute herd mentality if he sector is new and unexplored and profitable too. Sometime ago people from the Himalayan region left their jobs and work to be in the herd of the Yarsagumba collection. The same mentality has affected Nepal’s share market too.
Sometimes if you want certainty and clarity wait for others to take a position and see how they do. Then you will know what works. You are in the verge of following a herd. I see the syndrome in my friends too. They follow the same path of finishing their engineering, appear in GRE and apply for a master’s degree at American university.
Herd mentality is perhaps a natural extension of human behavior. We always want to be in group. Charles Mackey says ‘Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one’. But I feel if we know what we want, there is nothing wrong in it. As in life I am not actually in competition with others. I want to be a part of the life and crowd yet stand out.
