DADA Loop: Data / Analysis / Decision / Action and the MLM mind

How do you make decisions?  It's usually a 4 step process:

1. Gather Data

2. Analyze Data

3. Decide on Action

4. Perform the action

This is pretty obvious to most people. Military call it the OODA loop, civilians called it DADA loop (data, analysis, decision, action), but it's the same thing.

So how can this loop go wrong?  EVERY one of the four steps can go wrong.

• One can gather the WRONG data (victim of deception or bad data gathering)
• One can fail to analyze data objectively (by ignoring good data)
• One can fail to decide on any action (stalled loop)
• One can fail to perform the action correctly.

Let's see how MLMer reacts to these steps.

Gathering the Wrong Data

Many scammers do not scam directly, but rather, reach a core group of Judas goats and let them be the deceivers to go out and reach the masses.

MLMers are often very trusting of their uplines. They don't realize their recruiter could be passing on bad information, or simply UNVERIFIED information.  Then all these bad information were repeated as if they were the truth, or morphed much like the game of "telephone" into something that no longer resembled the truth.

Here are two examples of companies and reps spreading FALSE OR INACCURATE INFORMATION to prospective clients and recruits.

Example 1: Company claimed FDA certified, when they are actually FDA Registered Facility. Their reps changed it to FDA Approved Product or FDA Certified Product.

Example 2: Company reps are eager to claim features that do not actually exist in their product. 

Failure to Analyze Data

MLMers are very fond of repeating "positivity", which can be basically translated as "ignore any doubt". They don't understand there is a huge difference between skepticism vs. toxic negativity. This causes the MLMer to ignore useful but negative data because it was considered "negativity".

Ignoring all negative information makes the person reckless. No matter how much positivity you have, there are some things that can't be done.  Being reckless in a business is NOT a wise move to make at all, as it made the decision making flawed. It's stuffing the ballot box, except you're doing it to yourself.

If you already have an agenda in your head about something, your analysis is already tainted.

Failure to decide on action

A failure to decide on action is known as analysis paralysis, i.e. when no decision can be reached.

MLMers often failed to appreciate that "no action" is an action in itself.  Instead, they can often be goaded by recruiters into joining. Recruiters simply neg them into believing that failure to act is a failure of "entrepreneur spirit". Recruiters equate hesitancy to join without due diligence as "analysis paralysis", inviting you to be reckless and "join anyway" despite not having enough data for your "due diligence". 

It is perfectly understandable that you would NOT want to try something new without knowing more about it. So why is it so difficult to understand that you would NOT want to join a business without studying it? It's called "due diligence".  For these people, I offer a quote from Sir Richard Branson, billionaire head of Virgin Group

Business opportunities are like buses,
there's always another one coming. -- Richard Branson

Failure to act 

MLMers often failed to act when their own business is clearly tanking. All the evidence says "cut the loss, get out now", and the decision was reached, but due to some "intervention", was talked out of quitting, often due to group shame tactics. Indeed, a lot of MLMers talk about "persistence", "grit", if you get out you'll only see regret, and so on.

MLMers are often in denial when it was clear the company is fraudulent and sinking fast, and even when all evidence is pointing at "get out fast", they fail to act, hoping that the company will recover (when there is no sign of it doing so).  Indeed, there are people who always invoke "government conspiracy" when the scheme they had been making money in was shut down. Yet others want the scam restarted because they believe they deserve a chance to make money.

Conclusion

Any part of the decision making and action taking cycle can be corrupted and it is up to the person to detect and correct the loop despite outside influences by performing proper data gathering, filtering, analysis, and action.