Perception VS. Reality

A few days ago I was reflecting with an expert on Governance about whether reality built perception or was the other way around. Your comments have helped me to strengthen my idea on this subject.

My opinion, which I have formed through the years that I have been working on various institutional platforms, is that the PERCEPTION builds REALITY, and I go on to explain a case:

Many years ago my cooperative had a positive financial balance and at that time the officials and managers of the time were in the comfort zone, thinking that this positive number would never change.

One day the complaints began mainly due to the slowness in responding to the credits and claims for bad attention to the partner (a fundamental issue in a cooperative, the partner owns the company, and therefore expects a differentiated treatment with regarding a bank for example), and all those complaints and claims were neglected and underestimated ..... at that time the number was positive but the perception was negative; so it did not take long for the word to spread that the cooperative was treating its partners badly, it was not the same as before, they did not value their partners, and the new reality of the cooperative with the numbers against.

When the numbers arrived in negative, the causes continued to be underestimated, since everything always pointed to the quantitative issue, to the financial issue, when in my opinion those who build reality are people, and if those people have a negative perception ... sooner or later will influence the financial issue, ... and so it happened.

What happened? Many partners retired, others no longer recommended the cooperative (taking into account that the traditional source of recommendation was always word of mouth) and others stayed behind but made it notorious for the discontent they felt and also did not ask for loans anymore as inactive partners.

And so the years went by and one of the emblematic cooperatives that just turned 60 is in financial trouble, mainly because it was fulfilled: Perception builds reality, and so it was, the disgruntled partners built the current reality, obviously together with a series of internal and external factors, but I focus on the partners because they are the owners of the cooperative and who unconsciously one day became the worst enemy of the cooperative ..... the enemy who stopped recommending, who let go, who he made bad decisions, he blamed others for his mistakes, he delegated his responsibilities to others, and so we came to this hard reality; but who continue in the struggle to get our cooperative forward, we continue day by day building a new reality, working based on the perceptions of its current partners and giving them the importance they deserve. Until the final victory always ... as  Che Guevara said.