The Pursuit of Luck

In a long flowing river you can journey about the river, up stream and down and mostly you can avoid hazards.  But Sometimes you turn a blind corner in that river and all of a sudden the river is flowing so rapidly it becomes clear that your simply can’t run against that flow and you need to surrender to it and go with the flow to save yourself.

The success journey in life is similar to a river in that it can be navigated to a certain extent, but then all of sudden “change in flow” comes along.  But unlike a river in life, seeing and perceiving these change in flows is more difficult because emotions like pride tend to stop us from seeing things as they really are.

In 1986, a year after being kicked out of Apple, Steve Jobs acquired a company called the Graphics Group, part of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm .  The Graphics Group had some innovative animation hardware that had been used to produce special effects for Lucas’ films. Job’s plan was to leverage his hardware design skills he honed at Apple and make high end animation hardware.   Jobs cared little for animation at the time and changed the name of the “would be” hardware company to Pixar, then set about building the world’s best animation hardware.

It did not work, the hardware animation business was a hard slog and it was unprofitable. So Pixar went into producing computer-animated commercials for outside companies.

In 1990 despite the fact that there were some big names using the beloved hardware, like Walt Disney Feature Animation, Jobs realised that his love for well-designed hardware was being drowned by the flow called ” “animation” or “CGI”.  Jobs realised that animation was where the future of the company was.   In April 1990 Pixar sold its   hardware division, including all proprietary hardware technology to Vicom Systems, downsized the company but continued its relationship with Walt Disney Feature Animation.

After a tough year going with the new flow of the company Pixar made a $26 million deal with Disney to produce three computer-animated feature films, the first of which was Toy Story – and the rest is history!

Go with the flow!

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

~ Michael Jordan

Today was my daughter’s last day of year 9.   Mostly it’s a great school.  Unfortunately its expensive too.  But more unfortunately I have witnessed first hand the teachers forcing Evie (my daughter) and her fellow students into rote learning.   A couple of weeks ago  in preparation for her exams I tested Evie on her rote learning of the anatomical components of a human’s eye.

What a joke

I will gurantee that there are no 15 year old students in her grade who will be doing eye surgery or even lecturing on the anatomical components of a human’s eye over the summer.  I gurantee that not one of the students will remember the anatomical components of a human’s eye within 8 months.

Teaching should be focussed around self-learning, innovation, questioning, being discerning and building upon logical fundamentals.

Rote learning is for bored ducks.  Unlucky ducks that is.

So much in our culture raises our pulse in rage but so little reinforces our humanity

John Swindells, Film Maker

http://wwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrBw2cXWZS8w.youtube.com/watch?v=DrBw2cXWZS8

It is just over a year since  The Pursuit of Luck was named as one of Australia’s top 25 business blogs.  So it’s a good milestone to publish a summary of what The Pursuit of Luck is about.  The book is still coming and I think it will make a great airport book one day.

You get lucky when four elements align.

1. A random collision of life’s interactions presents an opportunity to you.
2. You are prepared to act upon the opportunity that has presented itself.
3. Your character is such that you are empowered and willing to act to exploit the opportunity
4. Your systems and techniques are such that you can exploit opportunities efficiently while mitigating risk

Therefore, The Pursuit of Luck is about:

1. Taking action to interact more with life and forcing more random collisions
2. Acting to change your brain, to change the way you think and to change the way you perceive the world so that you can force more random collisions
3. Acting so you are prepared to efficiently exploit the opportunities that random collisions throw your way
4. Building your character so that you willingly and fearlessly act to exploit opportunities.
5. Acting to develop systems and techniques that create efficiency and risk mitigation

Below, I have set out a checklist divided into the five principles of The Pursuit of Luck.  Like all good checklists it changes all the time.  I add stuff, people write to me with great ideas and I add these too.  So please be sure to visit this checklist again.

Principle #1 – Interact More with Life
To create more random collisions and force more opportunities to present themselves

1. Break your routines
2. Get off the beaten track – explore and bounce off new experiences and people
3. Do odd stuff
4. Hang out with odd people
5. Challenge conventional wisdom
6. Hang around fringe topics
7. Tinker, experiment, practice trial and error – you don’t know what you don’t know.  Adopt the Google 20% “own time”
8. Be inquisitive and curious
9. Don’t play by other people’s rules
10. Don’t be afraid of ideas
11. Publish and share your ideas and thoughts
12. Leverage other peoples thoughts and luck through delegation and decentralization
13. Persistently step up to the plate
14. Just Ask
15. Try Something New for 30 Days (Matt Cutts)
16. Advertise your needs
17. Patiently chip away at the cracks of “boulder-like” opportunities
18. Be Eccentric
19. Ignore what competitors are doing, do something that challenges
20. Don’t do focus groups, your customers don’t know what they don’t know, do something that challenges
21. Avoid excessive positive thinking
22. Never ask / survey conventional wisdom sheep. They don’t know what they don’t know and all bleat the same bleat
23. Train yourself and others around you in art of adaptability and re-invention
24. Re-invent yourself
25. Relax, be cool
26. Learn in the trenches
27. Pursue stretch goals
28. Pursue passionately
29. Avoid people wearing suits and elitists
30. Keep others off balance and spread confusion in your wake
31. Have conversations with people not discussions
32. Create people “collisions”
33. Avoid learning paralysis
34. Never justify or rationalize
35. Be thoughtful of others and the world around you
36. Listen, do lots of listening
37. Embrace simplicity
38. Read, read, read. Read blogs, books, periodicals, magazines in your domain, sector, business type or career type. Read blogs, books, periodicals, magazines not in your domain, sector, business type or career type
39. Train in unrelated fields
40. Poke people in the eye –  challenge their views, beliefs, routines and processes
41. Grab the tiger by the tail –  take on uncomfortable and difficult projects
42. Pursue uncertainty
43. Change your perspective (literally)
44. Take sabbaticals and vacations
45. Put yourself in underdog situations
46. Mix up and vary your working, thinking and brainstorming environment
47. Be yourself, develop a unique personal style,  develop a narrative of yourself that you can leave up to and feel lucky because feeling lucky attracts luck
48. Embrace technology
49. Joke about sometimes
50. Have a healthy disregard for the impossible
51. Be skeptical
52. Avoid premature congratulation
53. Comprise is for politicians and diplomats only
54. Travel
55. Embrace irritation.  Irritation is the prophet of the Innovation God
56. When you look at life’s objects and practices, ask yourself the question “how would this work upside down, or in its opposite form?”
57. Study and apply innovations and technology from sectors that are completely different to yours
58. Hang around situations with scarce resources, scarcity breeds innovation
59. Force random collision innovation by prodding  using random objects, words, images, websites and concepts.
60. Incremental improvement is admirable, but sometimes you need to leap into the uncertain.
61. Listen to your imagination and dreams and embrace other people’s fiction and fantasy.

Principle # 2 – Change Your Brain
To create more random collisions by interacting with life differently
To see more opportunities because you perceive  life differently

1. Adjust your “Think Big Limiter”
2. Learn a second language
3. Write poetry
4. Write a fictional story
5. Learn to play an instrument, or a new instrument
6. Listen to music, as many genres as you can
7. Change your immediate environment
8. Develop thought rapport, eg children, elderly, lazy, generation Y, retires, extreme environmentalists, extreme right wingers, socialists, feminists

Principle # 3- Be Prepared
So you can act rapidly when opportunity strikes

1. Pull weeds
2. Have cash on hand
3. Do all the boring stuff, and before its due to be done

Principle # 4 – Building Your Character Traits
So you are prepared to take the leap into the unknown of opportunity exploitation

1. Raise your self-esteem
2. Eliminate your fear of embarrassment
3. Embrace non-conformity
4. Act Boldly
5. Trust your instincts
6. Enjoy and be proud of failure
7. Have a purpose
8. Thicken Your Skin
9. Develop a “Do Whatever it Takes” attitude
10. Believe in Yourself
11. Commit
12. Never Quit (but know when to quit, see Principle #16)
13. Don’t Get Bitter, Get Successful

Principle # 5- Have Systems and Techniques in Place
So that you quickly leap into exploiting the opportunities with “back of the napkin” plans
So that you mitigate risk

1. The $5 calculator
2. The back of the napkin business plan
3. The two page business plan
4. Talk to potential byers, users, friends and enemies (5 minute phone calls)
5. Avoid analysis paralysis
6. Adopt a “Portfolio Approach”
7. Avoid perfection paralysis
8. Just Do it
9. Complexity is stupid, apply the KISS principle
10. Take hedged risks with downside limits
11. You can break even all day
12. Ask for help
13. Collaborate with others
14. Leverage experts in their field
15. Kill off the living dead
16. Know when to quit
17. Know when to be a committee of one

Other Stuff You Need to Know about the  The Pursuit of Luck Strategy

1. The Three Contact States: Misfortune, Limbo & Opportunity
2. The Leap-Increment Dichotomy
3. The Disorder-System Dichotomy
4. The Quit-Know When to Quit Dichotomy
5. Your perception of luck
6. The 6th “P” of Marketing:  Pursuit of Luck?

Contact the author, Business Consultant, Jason Bresnehan

Awakening from a night of surprisingly lucid dreams about aircraft design (why aircrafts I don’t know), I wondered about the the role of imagination, dreams, fiction and fantasy in the pursuit of luck.

Then less than half an hour into reading my daily blog and online news roll I came across a story about how Samsung, in its ongoing patent battle with Apple, has cited a scene from the science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Samsung wrote:

Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of a still image taken from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. The clip can be downloaded online. As with the design claimed by the D’889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table’s surface), and a thin form factor.

So basically Samsung is arguing that they did not copy Apple’s iPad rather the prior art from 2001: A Space Odyssey is the real inspiration for all modern touch tablets.

With lawyers arguing that fiction and fantasy is a very real source of inspiration of world changing innovation, then luck hunters should listen to their own imagination and dreams and embrace the fiction and fantasy produced by others.

Now…lets see if I can find a free aerospace airfoil design app for the iPad.

My former business partner the late Peter Purtell, an investment banker who traded the first Australian dollar ever, used to be very fond of the saying

A committee is like a dark cul-de-sac where good ideas are lured and beaten to death.

Last week I was reminded of this when I listened to a presentation by bass guitarist legend Brian Ritchie of Violent Femmes fame.  Ritchie who now lives in Hobart Tasmania, settled in Tasmania for a quiet life where he could enjoy the serenity of Hobart, be creative and maybe do a tour once and while to make some money.

However, then along came Salamanca Art’s idea for a Hobart based annual contemporary music festival.  The idea got some serious legs when David Walsh Tasmanian gambling multi-millionaire decide to back it.  Add to this the support of the State of Tasmania, then led by tragic Violet Femmes fan David Bartlett the  Premier of Tasmania (for US readers “Governor of the State”) and all of sudden it gave birth to MONA FOMA. And they asked Ritchie to be the curator.

If nothing else MONA FOMA’s success is an example of disparate people colliding. An arts collective at the bottom of the world working out of a circa 1812 Port of Hobart warehouse + a multi-millionaire who has made his money with gambling systems who is fascinated with contemporary art and extremely generous + a famous American bass guitarist who is also proficient in shakuhachi Japanese bamboo flute + a Labor Party (for US readers “Democrat Party”) Premier of the State with an IT background.

But there is more.  In the presentation Ritchie told us how he said to the MONA FOMA developers/funders that he would agree to be the curator for the festival on the condition he was a committee of one. And he went on to explain how that the experience has been surprisingly creative, but reinforced the idea that the committee of one rule was very effective.

Then today, a former university lecturer who most influenced my thinking and career compared to any other teacher or lecturer I have ever known, Jol Parlsow, has sent me an article from CNN Money called How Apple Works: Inside the World’s biggest startup.  In the first two paragraphs of this article it tells a story of Steve Jobs who despite the global perception that he was the leader of “Wonka’s factory, an enigmatic but enchanted place”, that in reality he is a hard-ass committee of one when he wants to be.

(From the article) According to a participant in the meeting, Jobs walked in, clad in his trademark black mock turtleneck and blue jeans, clasped his hands together, and asked a simple question: “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” Having received a satisfactory answer, he continued,,

“So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?”

Reading that just shortly after hearing a presentation from Brian Ritchie I just had to do a post called the “Committee of One”.  My very respected business partner the late Peter Purtell loved the concept. I always have. So does Brian Ritchie and now it appears the great man himself the founder/Chairman of Apple does as well.

To my regular readers this may be at odds with the concept that the pursuit of luck is about increasing random people collisions, and random collisions with places, things, objects, ideas, concepts, art, nature, fiction and fantasy.  But it is not at odds with the Pursuit of Luck.  It is a lesson that a successful business person is one who can facilitate and encourage the random collisions that inspire others and lead to innovation and then, at some point, be a committee of one is needed to get the job done.

Neil Pasricha’s pathways to “Awesomeness” – Attitude, Awareness and Authenticity could easily be three pathways for the pursuit of luck.

Check out Neil’s Video

If you belive that subscribing to the conventional wisodm of the day,  group think and herd mentality crushes your ability to innovate and be lucky, then you would be correct.

I began with a quote from the preface of the first edition of Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and I will end with a quote from the preface of the second edition: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.” In our efforts to conserve the beautiful planet that is our home, we should not fixate on CO2. We should instead focus on issues like damage to local landscapes and waterways by strip mining, inadequate cleanup, hazards to underground miners, the excessive release of real pollutants such as mercury, other heavy metals, organic carcinogens, etc. Much of the potential harm from strip mining can be eliminated, for example, by requirements that the land be restored to a condition that is as least as good as, and preferably better than, when the mining began. And it is high time that we assess great expanses of windmills and solar-panels in the previously unspoiled open spaces of the world with the same objectiveness that we apply to other human perturbations of nature.  Looking at once beautiful hilltops, now cluttered with windmills, I am reminded of an exchange between Winston Churchill and a woman who indignantly said, “Sir, you are drunk.” Churchill responded, “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning I shall be sober.” The hilltops will be ugly for a long, long time.Life is about making decisions and decisions are about trade-offs. We can choose to promote investment in technology that addresses real problems and scientific research that will let us cope with real problems more efficiently. Or we can be caught up in a crusade that seeks to suppress energy use, economic growth, and the benefits that come from the creation of wealth for all of mankind.