November 11, 1998

Winners create their own luck

By CLIVE SHEARER
Special to the Journal

Consider the birthday paradox. Randomly select any group of 23 people and you have a slightly better than 50% chance that at least 2 will celebrate birthdays on the same day of the month. With a randomly selected group of 30 people, the chance of this occurring rises to almost 70%!

This is easily proved by a randomly selected study of names in, say "Who's Who." Don't look for people who have the same birthday as yours, the chances of that are smaller, rather look for any two matching birthdays.

We often conclude that a given situation would be improbable. However, as Aristotle observed long ago, "the improbable is extremely probable." It depends on how you look at it. For example, did you know that proposals that are less than one inch thick win more projects than those that over one inch thick?

Does this mean that short proposals are better than long proposals? No, it means that more short proposals are usually submitted.

Did you know that the more light fixtures a firm has in their office, the greater their annual billings? Does this mean that brighter offices are more profitable, or indicate a need to invest in additional lighting in order to get to the top? No, larger firms support their staff in larger offices that have more lights, and larger firms produce larger billing volumes.

Another example of the probability of the improbable is seen in the way that randomly chosen letters spell out words. Start with a spinner to randomly select letters from the alphabet. Pick any three-letter word and then spin the arrow 75 times. After each spin note the letter of the alphabet that it pointed towards. Do you see your preselected word appear in the letters that you have recorded? Probably not. Bet that this exercise will produce ANY three-letter word, you will most likely win your wager. How many spins would it take until a recognizable four, or even five letter word appears? Such words appear surprisingly often.

To add drama to this exercise, see how often the words that "magically" appear in this way are related to either someone you know, or to a current event. If you did this in October 1989 and "wall" appeared, you could argue later that this was a premonition that the Berlin Wall would fall. Next, the name of your friend "Mike" might appear, followed a few words later by "park." This might amaze you because your friend Mike has just submitted a proposal for a park project. Watch for abbreviations such as Mon. Wed. Sat., and initials such as USA, NFL and CIA. Linked to other words they can reinforce the idea of strange phenomenon.

To a statistician, these occurrences are extremely probable. There are millions of coincidences that arise each day within the multitude of incidents and interactions that take place on our planet. The majority are not noticed because either we are not looking for them, or because we cannot relate to them. In the previous example, if I knew no one named "Mike" the fact that "park" appeared later would mean little to me.

What is the lesson? Shearer's axiom states that: "Luck is the last refuge of the incompetent." Leaders do not rely on coincidences. In the game of chess, if your general board position is poor you have few good options for your next move. Yet, if your pieces are strategically well placed you may be bewildered at the number of good options that present themselves. Simply running your business from day-to-day, without thinking beyond the monthly profit and loss statement can lead you to a very bad position on the business chess board. And the statistical chance of this happening is not small. Instead of spinning an arrow to wait for random words to appear go right ahead and pick your own words. Instead of spinning your wheels waiting to see what the business environment will produce go right ahead and plan to create your own winning environment.

Previous columns:

• High performance organizations, 08-12-1998
• Accountability, or the power of positive ownership, 07-08-1998
• Coaching tips for managers, 05-13-1998
• Client relations: Begin at the beginning, 03-11-1998
• When you run out of gas, 02-11-1998
• Working for the public sector, 01-14-1998
• 1998: Time to consolidate, 12-10-1997
• It's the little things that count, 11-12-1997