Being careful not to ‘Assign genius’ to previous success.
The longer you are an entrepreneur, the more you realise the difference between success and failure can be marginal.
I have always believed that I am in control of my own destiny and still subscribe to the principle of cause and effect. Not in a warm and fuzzy way, more that I am responsible for the momentum I create; both positive and negative.
I guess put simply, where my mind goes, energy flows.
I was recently asked to speak to a group about my journey as an entrepreneur and although I have always tried to be authentic and honest in past presentations, my experiences over the last few years made me reflect harder on the defining moments that influenced both my successes and failures.
‘Assigning Genius’ to your success
I have realised that often when telling your story, you try construct narratives to explain your success. You almost rationalise the success by subconsciously creating explanations that are consistent with the outcome.
The challenge when looking back though, is that it can become easy to overestimate your own responsibility for that success. Let’s be honest, we always like feeling that we have been wholly responsible for our success, mainly because of the scarifices you have made — but how often do we reflect on the the moments that sat outside of your control; let’s call it chance or luck in our journey.
When researching this, there is actually a term that specifically explains this called ‘Hindsight Bias’. For simplicity, here is the Wikipedia definition:-
“The inclination, after an event has occurred, to see the event as having been predictable, despite there having been little or no objective basis for predicting it.”
For me, this is thought provoking as I am realising that failing to consider the role of chance or the unpredictability of the environment you operated in, can potentially create a false economy of confidence. This can lead to an exaggerated sense of your personal abilities to ultimately influence outcomes in the future.
‘As soon as you think you have completely worked it out, you’re probably in trouble’ — Billy Beene.
Putting my ego aside for moment, the reality when looking back on my journey and successful ventures is that although there were influencing factors that sat outside of my control, it is easy to fall into the trap of assigning ‘genius’ to what plays out when explained retrospectively. The reality is that skill, resilience and bloody hard work played a substantial part, but still only a part of the equation in the outcome.
Don’t say the F-word
I think the irony is that when you fail, you often default to how ‘unlucky’ you were — in contrast to success, where you often attribute it to complete skilful execution. This raises the question, “Are we attributing far to much responsibility to both success and failure when there are so many other influences at play?”
Once we question our ultimate influence on success, I think it also helps us reframe our view of failure. Often a simple wrong turn on the journey can lead to unintended outcomes and sometimes there are events that sit simply outside of our sphere of control. Over the course of a business, there are likely hundreds of thousands of decisions that are essentially intuitive calls, so getting a large percentage of this right is a challenge for anyone.
This may explain the often cited rule of thumb that anywhere from three-quarters to 90 per cent of all start-ups “fail”. A lot of things need to go your way. This is why I think the quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt sums in up beautifully:
“I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough of the bad luck of the early worm.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Other than for the worm on this occasion, you realise failure itself is not an end point, it is often just a marker or a learning opportunity, yet in Australia we attribute so much negativity to failure. Success and failure are not simply binary. Our view of failure, particularly in the Australian start up community, versus say America, is something we need to reflect upon, as failure is often just a pit stop on the way to success.
My relationship with failure is still evolving because you begin to consciously realise it is intrinsically connected to success. I will always be ambitious but I realise you need to fail safely. By failing safely, it is to experience the often heartache of failure, but be able to really learn from it and never lose more than an acceptable amount — so that you can always surge again. The more experienced you become, you realise that you need to be defensive and aggressive at the same time.
One thing I do know is I have been fortunate to meet a lot of successful people in my life, both in business, sport and community and I would say all of them have had failures that have provided lessons for them to ultimately succeed.
There is often more to the story.
With the rise of self-agency and promotion in the media, we are now inundated with people who have had successful outcomes and now providing their ten steps to success or the emergence of ‘success commentators’ who inspire us through their social feeds and who without doubt are extremely talented and hardworking, but are ‘codifying’ their journey and positioning their success as if it was inevitable from the outset.
As the American essayist E.B. White wrote in the 1930s:-
“Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.”
You can understand people resent being told chance has been a factor because they feel like it discounts all the blood, sweat and tears that were involved. That is not the fact. Without the hard work, you would never have been in a position for success either.
To actually consciously recognise that you don’t have ultimate influence over all aspects of your success can be confronting because the irony is the risks you take as an entrepreneur are often justified by the very thought that you do.
Saying all of this, you could argue that self-confidence is a biological pre-requisite for entrepreneurs. Having a distorted view of the future and your influence over it is often the key ingredient to surge into the uncertain future of entrepreneurship or anything in life for that matter. We just need to find balance.
The past does not dictate the future
I think where it becomes super interesting though is observing people post successful ventures. Even when reflecting upon myself, success can create a sense of overconfidence. This has actually been labelled the most ‘pervasive and potentially catastrophic’ of all the cognitive biases.
The trap of assigning genius to past events and overestimating our own ability to influence success can often lead the most well intentioned entrepreneurs venturing into areas they have little experience. I must say, guilty as charged for me with this one, on a few ventures.
Actually a paper called Practice makes perfect: Entrepreneurial-experience curves and venture performance argues that entrepreneurs, despite their experience, may actually perform worse in subsequent ventures because of conditions that prevent learning from automatically occurring from one venture to the next.
Basically, overconfidence does not bode well as a foundation to launch your next venture or become a considered investor.
“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” -Bill Gates
Humility
Having the opportunity to reflect upon my own entrepreneurial journey, you realise a lot had to go right to have successful outcomes.
Realising the complexity of this enables you to be a lot more humble about your experiences and also more grateful for your successes. There are many brilliant entrepreneurs who have not experienced the outcomes they were seeking. The statistics tell us this continually.
I think humility — not in the lightly veiled sense that is often espoused, but genuinely, enables us to acknowledge that there are things that we simply can’t control and predict in life and business. Like it or not, luck or chance does play a part. Inversely, I think by realising this, you actually gain a greater influence on future outcomes as you have heightened senses, you become more in tune with your environment, conscious of your decisions and present in your actions.
Personally, I think it helps you become a less ego centric leader, ensuring you listen more, execute well on the things that are within your control and not over reaching in areas that fall outside of your expertise.
I was born lucky…. Success is subjective.
Living overseas in Indonesia and reflecting more on success, our starting points in life are so varied, so how we measure success from a position of privilege is far different, to someone with a different socio-economic status.
Because of this, it further underpins my thinking around luck and randomness. My life has been primed to make me successful as I was born into a great family, I obtained an education, in a country of opportunity. All things I had no control over.
Our society dictates that money is the most objective of measurements of success, but is this really the best measurement of our life?
Maybe we should consider that because we were born with certain opportunities that others may not have, we have a responsibility do something extra with our lives, because the ability to create opportunities and influence life in different ways is in itself a lucky break.
So what does all this mean?
For me, being an entrepreneur means you need to be ‘forever paranoid.’ It sounds like a medical condition, but it really means that there are always risks that can hurt you, even what may seem the safest bets, so it is best to assume you may be missing something. This humility does not subtract from your overall confidence, but ensures you to ask yourself the right questions and therefore surround yourself with the smartest people to continually test your views.
So as I prepare for my presentation, my theme will be that success obviously takes hard work and hustle, building the right teams, resilience and agility as you move steadfastly towards your vision. These skills alone may be the difference between success and failure. But for me, these are all the things we can do to increase your odds of success.
As Louis Pasteur observed, “fortune favours the prepared mind.”
I believe some of the defining moments on our journey are the decisions we make in the fringes of unpredictability and chance. This, in conjunction with learning from the lessons we gather from our failures provides the rich fabric of our entrepreneurial journeys.
Maybe the Roman philospher Seneca had a point when he said:
‘Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity.’
Fair to say my presentation won’t be having ten steps to success in it!
Best of ‘luck’ on your journey.
If you enjoyed this..
I am an educational Entrepreneur, investor & Co-founder of BSchool. We have bi-monthly newsletter with unique insights that will help support your journey in leadership and entrepreneurship. Please feel free to join our community. Join here.
If you would like to read more about this subject check out Robert H. Frank. He is a professor of economics at Cornell University and the author of Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy.
