The Pursuit of Luck

Of course it would be impossible to sell iPods in 1847 because there was no electricity, no computers, no software.

However, if the same weirdo from the future , this insane salesman selling  a claim that you can listen to music on a metal cigarette box with glass in it, came knocking on your door trying to sell you an iPod in in 1900 - no luck, 1920 -  no luck, 1980  - no luck.  In 2000 - maybe.

This makes the point, albeit in an exaggerated and fanciful way, that to pursue luck you need to be persistent.  At the original time you pitch your idea, your product or your service the world might not be ready for it.  So keep going back, keep pitching, keep batting and one day the world just might be ready for what it is that you are offering.

All of us have innovative, different or just plain strange ideas from time to time in our life. If they are kept in our own mind and not shared with world then they remain simply as brain chemistry which no one can ever react to.

Reaction of others is the objective of publishing your thoughts and ideas. Get your message, your thoughts and ideas out and one of three things will happen.

1. Nothing because the world at that point is time is indifferent to your ideas (a Limbo idea)
2. It will elicit a negative reaction because people at that time in the world are offended by or disagree with your ideas (a Misfortune idea)
3. It will elicit a positive reaction a that will create an opportunity (an Opportunity idea)

Publishing your ideas is easy in the Internet age. You can cheaply publish your ideas on a blog or your own website. If your idea is boring and everybody’s reaction is indifference then so what, nobody looks at your blog or your website.

If your published ideas elicit a negative reaction and people want to hang you from the rafters then good, you are probably onto something, but just not at this point in time.  Your now need to counter-attack or run from the idea (for a while) until it cools.

If people and businesses react positively then great, you have just created opportunity and are on your way to getting lucky - if you ACT upon it.

In Smile or Die: How Postive Thinking Fooled America & The World, Barbara Ehrenreich writes:

Breast cancer, I can now report, did not make me stronger, more feminine or spiritual.  What it gave me, if you want to call this a “gift”, was a very personal, agonizing encounter with an ideological force that I had not been aware of before - one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate.”

This same “ideological force”, positive  thinking, wreaks havoc on people’s ability to pursue luck.  The number one behavioral change that is required to pursue luck is to “pursue more, to act”. Postive thinking is neither pursuit or action, rather its a single-track use of your thoughts, or even worse its a thought process that’s akin to a broken record.

If nothing is happening and you feel frozen in Limbo then do something different, something odd to create an opportunity.  If an opportuntity comes you way act fast and without fear to seize it.  If misfortune comes your way then counter-attack aggressively or run in a direction far away from the misfortune.

When people rely upon deliberate positive thinking for a solution to Limbo, Opportunity or Misfortune (the three contact states of the Pursuit of Luck) they are avoiding pursuit, they are avoiding action.

Also, it takes an enormous amount of energy to think like a record stuck on the song “Think Positive”.    So forget positive thinking, use  this same brain energy to act.

Yesterday the State Government of Tasmania announced funding for Salamanca’s MONA FOMA Festival which will ensure it continues for the next four years.

Salamanca, Tasmania is considered by many to be a mini Greenwich Village, New York. MONA FOMA is an edgy and challenging music and art festival curated by Brian Ritchie of Violent Femmes.

MONA FOMA celebrates the collision of music and art where you will experience artists and musicians who push the boundaries of their practice in terms of technique, materials, unexpected collaborations, unusual use of venues, extreme volume (or silence), guerrilla actions and strange colours.

This year has seen finches playing electric guitars, a man using a coffee machine to make music and, a pipe structure capturing tidal waves to produce rhythms plus some of the biggest names in world music.

Business can learn a lot from such deliberate odd-ball collaboration and experimentation.  Deliberate off-the-wall collaboration and experimentation can result in very creative outcomes, which in-turn can translate into success (luck) for people and companies alike.

At BlogMaverick, Mark Cuban describes how NBC is pursuing luck.

NBC is pursuing luck (rating uplift in prime time for lower costs of production) by sacking Conan and moving Leno to prime time .  The change is a hedged risk with limited downside.  If it does not work then NBC can send Leno back to the late spot and pursue normal business models of piloting, and producing regular prime time shows.

You can pursue luck all day every day if your downside is limited.

Two cornerstone industry segments of the giant Californian economy are the film industry and venture capital industry.  The film industry’s importance to California is obvious - it generates billions in export earnings and employs nearly 1 million people.

The importance of venture capital is not as obvious but its importance can be appreciated when its understood that venture capital provided the early risk capital that many company greats like Intel, Apple, Genentech, Yahoo and Google.

The business of film and venture capital have something in common.  Their core underpinning strategy is a “portfolio approach”.   Film studios seed ideas, guide collaboration, fund films and release films. Sometimes the films flop, sometimes they break-even, sometimes that make more money than can be imagined.  Regardless of whether their last film was good, bad or ugly the role the dice again.  The title of film producer, Mike Medavoy’s book says it all “You’re as only good as your next one”.

A venture capital fund might provide start-up investments to twenty companies and like the film industry they guide collaboration of people and other companies. Some of their investee companies become “dogs”, some “the living dead” and some like Google become a  ”Star”.   The concept is that the one in ten star deal more than covers the losses from the dog and the living dead deals.  Then they raise their next fund, and do it all over investing in the next twenty companies.

If you can overcome your fear of failure, and not beat yourself up when a product, a film, or an investment in your portfolio fails, then adopting a portfolio approach to your business or life creates a powerful and liberating state of mind for you and your employees that brings risk taking, innovation and a “have a go” mentality to the surface.

It’s very tempting to limit your interactions with people to email.  It’s faster, more to the point, cheaper and it creates a record of the communication.

The problem is that emails do not turn into conversations and its conversations that are powerful in the pursuit of luck.

In a conversation people “bounce off each other” and with each “bounce” topics, thoughts and ideas tend to meander into areas that a matter of fact discussion or communication can never go.

Recently I was bidding for project to provide a consultancy in a defined geographic area, so I picked up the phone and had a conversation with a consultant who was bidding for a different area.   The result was that I gave the consultant a couple of good ideas to improve his bid and I picked up two ideas of how to value-add my consultancy approach and the quality of the bid.   These ideas would never had been elicited from email communication, because I would have to asked in writing “can you please tell me your ideas?” and he probably would have replied “no”.

A good business coach has the ability to motivate you, install and strengthen your core values, inspire you, help you innovate and help you get luckier.

There are four types of business coaches

1. Skills Coach - an example is a Digital Coach that would help you learn new skills in online strategy and implement those skills into online actions.
2. Development Coaches, who are focussed on improving the personal characteristics and competencies of the individual.  For example it could involve improving a person’s listening skills, being more receptive to suggestions, looking at problems in a more left of field or creative way.
3. Performance Coaches, who assists in the development o increased effectiveness in a measured area.  The measured area could be for example sales, or team feedback.
4. Transformational Coaches - Transformational coaching specifically analyses those aspects of the trainees’ behaviour which hinder their effective performance. Transformational Coaches work like a psychology therapist to identify the limiting behavioural patterns and develop plans and tactics for the trainee to overcome them.  For example, a transformational coach might propose circuit breakers to curb un-desirable behaviours such as expressing anger or frustration.