Ep4 - How does luck impact strategy?

In this episode we grapple with the concept of luck and randomness and how those interact with strategy.

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Episode Notes:

• Can you have a good strategy without having a destination?
  • No. A strategy is a way to get from somewhere to somewhere else. So you can’t build a strategy to get somewhere without knowing where that somewhere is.
  • You have to have an objective.
  • You can’t ask directions if you don’t know where you’re trying to get.
  • “If you aim for nothing you’ll hit it every time.”
• You can be a skilled strategist, but if you don’t know what you want or you’re not good at figuring out where you want to go, strategy can’t help you with that or save you from that.
  • Strategy can’t tell you where you SHOULD go (like a map or a compass)
  • Apple in the early 90’s – had many strategies, launched many products, but they weren’t hits. They may have been good strategies (getting quality products created), but the destination wasn’t the right one. It wasn’t what their customers really wanted.
• Strategies can be applied or built at various levels in your life (e.g. BC having a strategy for college that incorporated his strategy for family)
  • Strategies for a department, must incorporate the overall organizational strategy
• Strategy, at it’s most foundational level, is simply having consistency in your choices.
  • You could be making consistently wrong choices, but it’s always better to have consistency than to not have it.
  • Analogy: Brandon’s drive to work
  • Not having intentionality leads to a functionally random life
  • Intentionality is a key ingredient in the life of almost everyone who is successful (aside from random chance and so on)
  • Our brains are wired to see patterns. Seeing patterns is closely connected with intentionality.
  • Example: sailing a ship without using the steering wheel
  • PewdiPie reacts to millionaires – video by Jubilee – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INuJXrUQJB0
  • People think that luck is everything.
• Locus of control
  • Sometimes our locus of control can influence the outcome, because our confidence “speaks” to the people around us. And most external factors are people factors.
  • If you don’t believe that you can effect the outcome, you will never create a strategy. So Creating a strategy depends upon at least a little bit of internal locus of control.
  • In general, statistically, people can influence their lives more right now than they ever could all throughout human history.
  • Having a historical perspective can lead to having a stronger internal locus of control, realizing the time of opportunity that exists right now.
• Defining Strategy: consistency in choices, guiding principles.