Tag: entrepreneurship

Luck

Fabrizio1 Comment

Luck is a major factor in all types of success, and the failure to recognize this simple fact is a major factor in all later collapses.

Some people, at some point, start thinking that success is owed and inevitable.

They are perhaps very talented people, or people who put a lot of work and long hours into shaping something, or even incredibly creative people who have managed to change the rules in their industry, or again natural and charismatic leaders that suck others into their visions.

But should all this be a determining factor, there would be millions of billionaires and thousands of unicors and decacorns. And the best thing would be that once gotten there, there they would stay forever. They would own the recipe, after all.

Success is all of the things above, and yet it is mainly a series of unprecedented and unrepeatable circumstances that lined up to provide somebody or a group of people with an opportunity. If you are there, you most likely do not know how you got there, and you better not get too comfortable.

Appreciate the luck you have had, make it worth it (not only for yourself, ESPECIALLY not for yourself), and build resilience for when the moment will come for you to step out of the spotlight.

How are you going to know?

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When you cut with a knife, more often than not, you are not risking anything as long as you are cutting something that is familiar and that does not require a particular effort.

Most problems start when you hit a spot that you cannot cut with your normal moves. You turn the knife up and down, apply more pressure, your motion loses fluidity, you get more tired as the difficult spots increase.

That’s when the risk of getting cut is higher, and that’s when you most need to be present and alert.

The same is valid for our lives, both personal and professional. You need to have routines you can relax in, in order to be ready when it’s needed.

If you dedicate your attention to everything and everybody in the same measure, if you consider all the opportunities equally appealing and worth your time, if that particular feeling you feel when something is important is there all the time.

How are you going to know?

Give and receive

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It’s easy for most of us to complain about what other people do, the way they treat us, the things they say, sometimes even the thoughts they might have as they interact with us.

But are we as ready to say “thank you!” whenever they do something we actually like?

We shape the behaviour of those around us, and if complaints and criticism is all we give, whether we do that explicitly or not, why should we expect anything different in return?

Identity

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There will always be two ways to build an identity.

The first one is founded on differences and contrasts.

We are different (from them).
Our team is the best performing in the company.
They do not care as much as we do.
When I see them, it makes me want to give my best to beat them.

The second one is founded on unity and commonalities.

We all work to have long lasting impact.
Our teams share the values of transparency and hard work.
We are in this together.
Our organisation wants to be a place in which people of different background can express their best work.

Which one you pick is an active choice, one that needs to be reaffirmed over time, one that you need to be aware of in the first place. So often we slip onto the first option simply because it is the easiest to put into practice. Be intentional.

Valuating

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Buzz is a misleading distraction.

More than 9 out of 10 venture capitalists think that unicorns (startups worth more than $1bn in the private market) are overvalued, no matter if they have one in their portfolio or not. Lyft‘s and Uber‘s stocks have lost respectively 43% and 28% of their value since they went public last spring. WeWork (and its investors) thought the company was three or four times more valuable than the higher point public investors would consider for its stock.

Buzz is misleading, because it generally focuses on one single thing. You always get what you reward, and so if all investors care about is valuation, the company can get to a high valuation (at least in the private market). And it is distracting, because it takes focus away from things that are more important when building an organisation that impacts millions of lives. Things such as the company culture, the business fundamentals, the effect of the product or service on society at large.

Companies can be built without raising money, without a pitch deck, and without a title in the front page of the financial newspaper.

It all depends on what you want to achieve in the long term.