When it comes to Success, does Luck matter more than Talent?

Recent research highlighted by the annual Ignoble prizes may show that, when it comes to being successful, luck counts for more than talent.

The research I’ve linked to below suggests that we typically believe success to be mainly due to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, smartness, effort, wilfulness, hard work or risk taking.

  • But, they say, when you look at who actually gets to be successful, it isn’t the most talented – it’s the averagely talented AND lucky people.

What’s your take on this?

It’s such a widely held view (at least in the Western World), that success comes from who you are and what you put in, that I wonder if readers will disagree with these findings?

Some of the most successful people I’ve worked with go out of their way to acknowledge the role that luck has played in their success. For example,

my clients often say things like “I’ve just been lucky!”

Sometimes they mean it and it’s a recognition that yes, they’ve worked hard and yes, they have some talent, but that their success has come often from being in the right place at the right time.

(and by ‘luck’ I think they mean those uncontrollable external factors that can count for so much.)

At other times, it seems that people are just wary of tempting fate – another recognition that success which is due to external factors can turn at any time.

My view is that you make your own luck.

In business and in other walks of life, you can’t be successful if you’re not actually in the game.

If you’re not out there, playing to the best of your ability, even a lucky break is going to struggle to find you.

Unless, I suppose you are freakishly lucky?

But maybe I’m deluding myself in the hope that my natural talent will eventually get me somewhere? Or I’m just clinging on to a false notion that I have some vague ability to control things that are actually beyond my control.

I would love to know what you think?

  • When you’ve been successful, how much luck was involved?
  • And to what extent did you “make your own luck”?

Here’s the research:

TALENT VERSUS LUCK: THE ROLE OF RANDOMNESS IN SUCCESS AND FAILURE

 

Don’t talk about Doom and Gloom – Act!

Why it’s so tricky to talk about problems and risks in a way that people will listen to. And how it might actually be better to just take guerrilla leadership actions instead!

Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach

What’s been your experience of trying to talk to people about risks and problems and things that could go wrong?

Don't talk about doom and Gloom - take guerrilla leadership actions instead! Share on X

 

A coaching question

What kind of person are you – at your absolute best?

I’ve written before about what I believe to be one of the most powerful questions you can ask, as a leader or a coach – or anybody really. And here’s another.

If anything, this one is actually even more of a favourite of mine because I just love the impact it has. It also sits really well with one of my core coaching principles – that you coach the person, not the issue they are dealing with.

I use this question sparingly, because it is so powerful. I particularly like it when somebody says something like:

I just don’t know where to start!

“Well,” I’ll say, “What kind of person are you, at your absolute best?” – and that almost always opens up several avenues of approach.

Or a client will say:

Which is the right choice for me?

And I’ll ask it then, “What kind of person are you, at your absolute best?” The choices we make should always be informed by who we are – and I don’t mean the person we are when we ‘re doubting ourselves or holding back or angry with the world, I mean the real person in our core – the absolute best version.

Or somebody will say:

I can’t seem to get on with this colleague no matter what!

And I’ll use that same question then, “Hmm, interesting – what kind of person are you – at your absolute best?” That’s always the version of ourselves to bring forwards when we want to connect well with others. Even or perhaps especially if that version of ourselves is vulnerable or unsure (as the best people often are).

How about you? What are you like at your absolute best?

And as a leader – how would you feel using this type of question? What kind of impact would it have on you, if somebody asked you?

Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach

A coach's favourite question - what kind of person are you - at your *absolute* best? Share on X

Slower, Lower, Weaker

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8 ways to deal with managers who aren’t top performers

[to download a copy, click and select the image above and then right-click and select  ‘Save image as … ‘]

The Olympic motto is “Citius – Altius – Fortius”, better-known as ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’. But what about the opposite – what about those of us who might be Slower, Lower or Weaker in our potential?

How organisations regard the people in their teams and leadership positions who would never make it to the management Olympics says a lot. I believe it actually speaks volumes about the attitudes of those who shape an organisation’s culture. In particular, how they regard others (and perhaps therefore how they also regard themselves) along two key dimensions:

  • Whether the fact that not everyone will make it to the management Olympics is a Risk or an Opportunity; and
  • Whether people’s innate capacities are either Fixed or Flexible.

I’m not entirely convinced that it’s best to think of there being a right or a wrong way to regard this issue, more that senior leaders and organisations should be aware of the choices they’re making and do so consciously and strategically.

Which is your organisation’s typical response when managers might not be candidates for the Olympics?

Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach

Slower, Lower, Weaker - what should you do if people in your organisation aren't going to make it to the management Olympics? Share on X

Thinking is more painful than electric shocks!

Why people often don’t get clear about their desired outcome or choose the best approach to take, before they act

It’s helpful for people to think about stuff more – particularly on why  they’re about to do something and on how  they’re about to do it. This is because:

1. Knowing why  we’re about to do something – the outcome we want to achieve – is much more important than the first few steps, the tactics, that we might take to get to it.

It’s easy to grasp this. If your desired outcome is clear but the first few steps you take towards it don’t work, you can simply try some other tactics. But if you start from the tactics themselves without really being clear about where you’re trying to get to, then early failures tend to derail all your efforts.

(There are exceptions to this rule: notably if you’re stuck and don’t know what you want to achieve then just trying something – anything – can be sometimes be more empowering than staying stuck);

2. Actively choosing how  we’re going to do something – the strategy, route or approach we might take – is a key determiner of success.

Far too many people simply do everything the same way, or the same way that they did it before, regardless of whether or not this gets results. It’s where that old saying comes from, “If you’ve only got a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” Actively choosing the way to go about doing things, dependent on the circumstances and the people involved, creates flexibility of approach. And flexibility of approach in our behaviour is what leads to win-win.

Why don’t people do this kind of thinking more?
Get clear about their desired outcome and choose the best approach to take, before they act?

One part of the answer is in an article I was delighted to discover recently, headlined “People Would Rather Experience An Electric Shock Than Be Alone With Their Thoughts”!

A team of researchers have discovered that:

  • Left alone in a room with just their thoughts, more than half the participants described the experience as ‘not enjoyable’, most found it difficult to concentrate and reported their minds wandering. The negative aspects went up further in another group who were asked to repeat the task at home;
  • In one experiment people had the option of giving themselves an electric shock rather than complete the full thinking time. Even though they’d had that level of shock before and had said they’d pay $5 not to be shocked again, 67% of the men and 25% of the women involved chose to shock themselves rather than just sit and think!

You can see their article here: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/people-would-rather-be-electrically-shocked-left-alone-their-thoughts

My take on this is that human minds are evolved to deal with the real, physical world and with the web of social relationships that it takes to thrive. Disengaging from actual, concrete tasks and from real interactions with others long enough to do this kind of outcome/approach thinking is not something we’re naturally evolved to do. We have to learn it. And sticking with it long enough to get results ‘hurts’ and takes a lot of energy. Similarly, if you’re anything like me, there’s a whole load of failed adventures, thwarted ambitions and personal shortcomings that I’d really rather not think about at all, if only if wasn’t for the chance to improve things in future.

As my coaching practice evolves, I find that more and more people are saying things like: “I just need to hear myself think out loud”, or “I need some space to reflect on things and work them out, a kind of sounding board.” The hardest thing to do when I’m coaching in that kind of situation, is to do nothing but listen – but at least I don’t feel the need to give myself electric shocks!

Let me know if you’ve noticed any of this too please – or what you’re discovering about thinking, outcome-focus and behavioural choices yourself.

Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach

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Six Things that Great Time-Management is about NOT doing

“#1 Will Surprise You!”
(It won’t – that’s just my silly way of highlighting that #1 is about NOT getting distracted.)

I’m writing this as the world re-opens, in stops and starts, post-covid lockdown.

And I notice that a lot of people are struggling with their Time Management. That’s understandable. So much of how we’re doing things now has had to change, that it can be difficult to find our old patterns of effectiveness. Worse, nearly everyone else is in the same situation, so that when my time-management misses a beat, it can affect several other people’s timing too.

In case it helps, here’s my six things to NOT do, if you want to have great time-management. None of these are necessarily easy by themselves, but if you or the people in your teams are finding it tricky to manage their time just now, these are the things to focus on first:

  1. Not getting Distracted
    A lot of great time-management is actually about Attention-management. Give some attention to how you can block, control, ignore or manage those things that might otherwise steal your attention – and therefore your time.
  2. Not feeling Overwhelmed
    One of the key reasons why people aren’t effective and don’t work at their best is the sense of feeling overwhelmed by all that’s required; to the point where it’s either difficult to see where to start, or hard to believe it’ll ever be finished. Start anywhere and go step-by-step if that happens.
  3. Not being Bored
    Human beings are generally hard-wired to go off and look for interesting stuff. I think it helps to not fight this. A meditation teacher once described the mind-sharpening part of meditation to me as being like training a puppy to sit still. When it wanders off, you can just gently bring it back again.
  4. Not forcing Creativity
    For most people, creativity is a process that requires inputs and some system of stirring around, before it can produce an output. Nothing wastes time quite like trying to force a high-quality decision to come or to force a deep insight into a knotty problem to arise without that process happening first.
  5. Not confusing Immediate with Important
    This is often the starting point for a lot of writing about time management. And with good reason, as it’s so easy to get into fire-fighting and so much harder to justify fire-prevention. But once you’ve dealt with the immediate priorities, don’t just focus on preventing bad stuff in the longer-term. What are the long-term benefits that you could be working towards too?
  6. Not overlooking Sequence and Task-Dependency
    Some things need to be done in a certain order to be successful. Or are dependent on other things happening first, before they can take effect. If you can avoid the paralysis sometimes caused by over-planning, then a project-management approach is often also a brilliant way to have great time-management.

Let me know if you’ve noticed any of this too please – or what you’re finding out about time-management in the “new normal”?

Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach

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Keeping your mind fresh and flexible

When was the last time you travelled home from work on a different route to normal?

In my coaching work I often encourage people, especially those who are maybe a little stuck or who want to up their game, to go and seek out variety and unpredictability.

This is important because so much of what we do, what we say and how we think, is driven by habit. Habit is useful, because it’s ‘expensive’ from a brain-power point of view to have to stop and think about things before we do them. Being on autopilot is efficient. And yet, if habit is all that drives us, how do we develop, learn and grow?

I’ve long argued that the extra brain-expense of doing things like driving home on a different route every now and then, is a good investment, because it helps our brains make new connections and be more pliable. Those connections and that pliability are extremely useful for increased problem-solving and mental and sensory acuity – the ability to spot information and recognise patterns.

So it was interesting reading Steven Kotler’s book “The Rise of Superman – decoding the science of ultimate human performance,” in which Kotler cites unpredictability and novelty as being essential steps towards achieving what athletes call flow state.

“[things like] brushing your teeth with the wrong hand,” says Kotler, “…increases novelty and unpredictability, demanding focus and pattern recognition.”

I’m still only half-way through that book and undecided about just how useful it might be, but it’s nice to see others also emphasising these points. Kotler also goes on to quote renowned neuroscientist James Olds as saying that new routines in our daily lives produce dopamine and norepinephrine, the feel-good chemicals that our brains use to amplify focus and enhance performance. In fact, I got really excited, because Kotler then says that James Olds practices what he preaches by driving home from work a different route every night!! Unfortunately, even though this would be a great way to justify what I’ve been telling people to do for years, I don’t think it’s entirely accurate – read for yourself what Olds did actually say in one interview by clicking here.

Regardless of that possible slip up, I’m interested in how you keep things fresh and your brain nice and flexible? How do you make sure that not everything you do is driven by habit or routine?

As usual, please leave me a comment if they’re still open below, or tweet me @NickRobCoach.

The Road You’re On

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Which matters most: the road you’ve chosen for yourself and your business; or your commitment to that choice?

A resource that gets used a lot in my world is the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken, from his 1920 book: Mountain Interval.

It’s a very inspirational poem and what people usually like most about it are the last two lines, where Frost is talking about the two roads that he could have walked into the woods:

I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

It’s easy to see how this is so inspiring.

Choosing the unknown path, and dealing with all of the hardships and tests along the way, is a great reflection of everybody’s life and work experience. None of us really know what lies ahead and all of us have had trials and tribulations as well as joys and accomplishments along the way.

And yet, re-reading the poem again this morning, I wondered if perhaps I’ve been misunderstanding Frost’s emphasis.

I was struck by the end of the second verse and the beginning of the third, where he’s making the choice about which road to take. One track is grassier than the other, and yet he bothers to tell us:

Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.

It made me realise that both of these roads are unknown to Frost’s morning traveller.
Yes, he took the one that was a bit grassier, but actually they were really about the same.

And (with apologies for the huge sideways leap here but this is how my head works), I was reminded of doing a series of exercises around ‘White Space Analysis’ on my MBA. This is where you investigate a couple of criteria that are important to buyers in a particular market – Price and Quality, for example – and then plot all of the current offerings in that market onto a grid, to see where there might be some white space for a new offering.

What I remember most about doing that exercise over the weekend at college and then just a week or so later taking part in a marketing strategy programme back in the large organisation where I worked, was this:

With one or two exceptions perhaps, there really wasn’t a whole lot of viable white space anywhere in any market. At first glance, almost everywhere you looked, some business was already doing something that more or less fit the criteria. To really make the most of the white space exercise, you had to look beyond that first glance, to include:

  • nuance – where is there some nearly-white space?
  • competences and culture – what nearly-white space can we thrive in by virtue, say, of our innovation and/or our resilience?

That is what Frost was really saying I think. That all roads are actually already travelled a bit; just not by us. That our choice of what road to take will be determined by a nuance – the grass is slightly less worn on one track, maybe – but that it’s our choice nevertheless. That for every road we do take, one remains not taken and can never be known and should not be regretted. That what really makes a difference is not which road you choose but your commitment to being totally on it.

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

As usual, please leave me a comment if they’re still open below, or tweet me @NickRobCoach. How do you feel about your choice of the road you’re on – and what was involved in that?




Puppy Mind

What to do if you or your team member are the kind of person who loves to get distracted or unfocused at work

One of the concepts I like to work on with clients, is that some people have a Puppy Mind. That is, they’re easily distracted and love to go chasing after interesting things at the drop of a hat.

People who have a Puppy Mind can often be very critical of themselves. I hear clients say things like: “I wish I could be more focused!” Or, “I must a nightmare to work with; always chasing after the next thing!”

And people who have Puppy-Minded team members can get quite worried about or frustrated with them. Leaders are often concerned that Puppy-Minded people will get overloaded, or fail to finish a long project or will miss something boring but important in favour of something interesting but less critical.

I always say, yes those criticisms or concerns do have some truth in them. But – who doesn’t love a puppy!?

It would be a terribly boring world if everybody at work was the same as everybody else. In fact, research shows that teams with a diversity in thinking styles outperform, in the long run, teams where everybody thinks the same.

There’s also research to suggest that around 30% of people at work have a natural inclination to bob around from one thing to another, rather than go through things, step-by-step, from start to finish. Not all of those people will be Puppy-Minded, since many of them will have trained themselves to be slightly more focused and slightly more linear in their approach. But nevertheless, a significant proportion of people at work have got some puppy in them. Which is good! We need their enthusiasm and get-up-and-go and their ability to juggle a million things and their ability to sniff out something interesting.

One aspect of Buddhist Mindfulness uses the idea of Puppy Mind for meditation practice. Whenever your attention wanders, think of it like a puppy being trained to sit. And then gently but firmly lead it back to the sitting position.

If you find you’re being critical of yourself, as a leader, for having Puppy Mind, remember that your enthusiasm and interest and sheer Puppy-Appeal is probably part of what made you successful in the first place. If you need to, just notice when you’re distracted, and gently bring your attention back to where it needs to be.

Similarly, if you find yourself worried about or frustrated with a Puppy-Minded team member there are three things you should be considering:

  1. How lucky you are to have that Puppy-Loveliness around!
  2. Is now to the time to just gently and firmly point them back to the right place and the right direction; to do some Puppy Training?
  3. What needs to change in their workflow or working environment so that it’s easier for them to play to their strengths?

Above all, whether it’s you yourself or someone else who is a little Puppy-Minded, remember that shouting at and getting frustrated with puppies DOESN’T WORK – but that gentle encouragement and firm-but-kind hearted training does.

As usual, please leave me a comment if they’re still open below, or tweet me @NickRobCoach. What do you notice about your own or other people’s Puppy Mind at work?




 

Thinking at work isn’t dead – is it?

The smartest bloke I ever knew used to start his working day by putting his feet up on the desk. Is that still important?

I’d gone to work in his department from a demanding operational job and it was a shock to see all this apparent leisure happening. So I asked him what he was doing and got the predictable answer:

“Thinking!”

Just recently I’ve been coaching in a couple of organisations where the amount and quality of thinking left a lot to be desired!

Problems which could have been worked through seemed mystifying.
Rewarding opportunities, which a little bit of smart analysis would have highlighted, were lost in a frenetic chasing of the more obvious.

My smart boss was quite fierce about it:

“I recruited you to do the smart thinking too. So you’d better find your own way to make it happen.”

But it’s not just the business benefits that make good thinking so important. The future of work is going to be very different, just in the next few decades compared with today, driven by an exponential growth in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace. It might not be too strong to say that:

In the future, if you’re not thinking at work, you won’t be at work!

AI experts say that the human talents they believe machines and automation may not be able to replicate are primarily about:

  • creativity
  • collaborative activity
  • abstract and systems thinking
  • complex communication
  • the ability to thrive in diverse environments.

All of those require at least a modicum of good quality thought.

If you’re a business owner or a leader in a larger organisation:

  • How much good thinking are you doing yourself (whether you have your feet up on the desk or not)?
  • How do you make sure that your teams are doing enough good thinking?

As usual, please leave me a comment if they’re still open below, or tweet me @NickRobCoach. What kind of thinking is important in your work – and how do you make it happen?