Last week’s blog looked at how everyone is in charge of their own destiny. That if we work hard and really apply ourselves, we can succeed at almost anything. However this is only really telling one side of the success story, for there is a fundamental law of the universe that we all must observe…chance.
The Uncertainty Principle
The universe is fundamentally uncertain; we cannot know where particles are and what their velocity is at the same time. In other words, we cannot predict the future. To map out our future we can only use probabilities.
Chance itself though, has a profound effect on all of our lives; from the millions of sperms that could have beat you to the egg, to the place you live, what parents you have and what school you went to, all have shaped and made the person you are today. If there are so many random elements to our lives are we really in control of our own destiny, or are we passengers on a road trip though randomness?
Right place & right time
In the previous week we saw how Matthew Syed had practiced for thousands of hours to become the UK men’s champion at table tennis. However we failed to focus on the real points that made him successful, we simply concluded that the hours of practice he did made him successful.
But what if Mathew had been born 5 years earlier? He would not have had an older brother to practice with, he might not have had a 24 hour club to practice in, and he may have never started playing table tennis in the first place.
You might be thinking “ok, so he had a lucky start, but it was his own efforts that got him to where he is”. But think again, what was it that made Matthew so devoted to table tennis?
Initially he played table tennis with his brother because he enjoyed it. By being fortunate to have an older brother and a table to practice on, by the time he went to senior school he had already accumulated a massive head start, from that he was encouraged to go further. This encouragement started a positive behavioural feedback loop, where the more Matthew trained the more positive feedback he received from his coaches and so the more he trained.
Mathew did not wake up one morning and say “I’m going to be a table tennis star and nothing is going to stop me!” he simply went along with the flow and ended up as one.
RGH
Another way of looking at how chance plays a role in our lives and particularly in successful business, is through the Random Growth Hypothesis (RGH ).
The best way to illustrate the RGH is through a simple coin tossing example.
Ten million people enter a coin tossing competition, they all pair up and a toss a coin to decide who will go through to the next round. So after one round there will only be 5 million people left. The eventual winner will have correctly guessed 24 consecutive coin tosses.
To the outside observer it is obvious that the eventual winner has won by chance, but to the individual who won, they will believe that either they have a natural ability at guessing heads or tails or they will believe they have found a pattern for guessing it. (And why wouldn’t they, after all the probability that they just won by chance was 1 in 10 million.) The theory states, “The eventual winner will be writing books on how to win at coin tossing!”
We often look up to the likes of Alan Sugar and Richard Branson as fantastic business men. But are they good at making business decisions or are they just tossing coins and getting the right answer?
Take the example of John Grisham, his first manuscript A Time to Kill, was rejected by 26 publishers. He was still completely unknown until a bootleg copy of The Firm, found its way into the hands of a director, who brought the rights to make a film on it for $600,000. Once he had some recognition for his work, his future works began to fly off the shelf. Nowadays, John Grisham can write a fairly average book and it will still become a top seller. There are probably far better writers out there, but they have just not been found yet. John may well give lectures on how to be a successful writer but in truth he’s famous because he got lucky. John is not the only writer to have found success after a long series of rejections. Anne Frank’s diary received several rejections; one comment stating it was “a dull dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotion. Even if the book had come to light five years ago, when the subject was timely, I don’t think there was a chance for it”. J.K Rowling received nine rejections before she was signed and Dr Sues, twenty seven rejections. John Kennedy Tole received so many rejections he gave up all hope of ever being a successful writer; he became so depressed he committed suicide. Eleven years later he won Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and his book, A Confederacy of Dunces, sold over 2 million copies.
Success
This blog has looked at the two aspects of success, hard work and chance. But some conclusions can be made; whilst chance plays a key aspect to success and many of us are not given head starts in life, it doesn’t mean we have to give up on our dreams. We cannot give up and become a John Tole. As much as John Grisham owes much of his success to chance, he didn’t give up, even after twenty six rejections. At times John Grisham must have felt as low as John Tole, but he kept going, he kept writing and he kept on improving himself.
For most of us our careers are already established, our lives seem fixed and unchangeable. Success seems to be for those who are fortunate to have the right parents and the right settings.
But the truth is, if we try hard, dedicate our spare time to our own goals then maybe, just maybe, we’ll get lucky and succeed.
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