So You Think You Can Succeed (On Purpose)

Do you believe that you can deliberately achieve success in your business? Do you believe in the five principles of THIS, or the seventeen steps of THAT, or the highly-promoted solutions of THOSE GUYS? Are there steps you can follow that will lead you on the path to the promised land? Is there some kind of organizational physics that we can master, principles that will guarantee our upward progress. Can you, on purpose, change your good into great?

If you truly believe you can, the first thing I'll ask you to do is to invest heavily in Dave's Unicorn Ranch, because it's just as likely to succeed. Then, I'll suggest you think about some of the Olympic athletes who didn't win any medals in Vancouver 2010.

Consider Anton Kushnir of Belarus, top-ranked aerials jumper in the 2010 season, who didn't even qualify for the finals. Consider Dominique Maltais, a Canadian favourite for a medal in snowboarding, who didn't even qualify for the final. Consider South Korean speed skater Lee Ho-Suk, the reigning world champion, who fell in the last seconds of the 1500m short track, losing an almost certain gold medal and walking away with nothing.

It's obvious that these athletes had a clear purpose to win gold in Vancouver. They were thoroughly prepared, thoroughly capable, and they did everything necessary to win gold. Other than actually win it, of course.

Unfortunately for my unicorn ranching prospectus, and for a lot of fad-chasing managers, there are no formulas to guarantee success. Business success is not about formulas, about best practices, about the latest management fads, or the latest magic technology. There's nothing you can do to guarantee the success of your company.

You could start 100 identical businesses, all using the same principles, the same processes, the same products, the same management styles, the same technology and the same strategies. After a few years, some of them would have succeeded wildly, and some would have dissappeared. Though they might all start out with the same purpose and the same prescription, some would thrive while others would die.

So does this mean we should give up hope, shut down the business and get jobs as Walmart greeters? No. But it does suggest that we get a little more educated about some things like complexity, randomness, risk, and adaptability. It does suggest that we need to realize business is about making judgements, based on data and theory. About making judgements in a world of risk and uncertainty. About helping our people to do the same.

And it does suggest that we need to stop evaluating our judgements based only on how things turn out. It is quite a stretch for most of us to realize that we can make the exactly right decision, yet still lose. Do all the right things, yet still fail.

If we re-ran the Olympics immediately following the closing ceremonies, do you have any doubt that most of the events would turn out differently? Athletes that failed to qualify would win gold, and athletes that won gold would fail to qualify. And, try as we might, we wouldn't be able to point to the reasons for the different results. This is what complexity, variation and the real world are all about.

So, make the best judgements you can and move forward. And, be cynical, very cynical, of anything that claims to guarantee your success.

Finally, please make your cheques payable to Dave's Unicorn Ranch - a guaranteed investment (for me, not you.)