Balancing The Three Pillars Of Success: Preparation, Opportunism, And Luck
In one of the most beautiful songs by Bee Gees “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” — Barry and Robin Gibb ask the question: “How can a loser ever win?”. Well, in many cases… it’s a stroke of pure luck! Just ask Daniel Kahneman, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Behavioral Economics, and he will tell you: “We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events”
So, it’s not a big surprise that when Bulat Okudzhawa, the most famous Armenian folk singer, wrote a melodic guitar ballad entitled: “The Prayer” — he said the following (in my loose translation): “Grant long life to the wise man, the coward, give him a horse, make this world a better place, and don’t forget truly yours…”
Now, there is nothing more inspiring than reading about the successes of great leaders and the way they did it. And it was particularly refreshing to hear how one of the most accomplished and famous female executives, Christine Lagarde — encourages young professionals to not only be prepared for the success but also to be open-minded and opportunistic.
According to Wikipedia, “Lagarde previously held various senior ministerial posts in the Government of France: she was Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry (2007–2011), Minister of Agriculture and Fishing (2007) and Minister of Commerce (2005–2007). Lagarde was the first woman to become the Finance Minister of a G8 economy and is the first woman to serve as President of the European Central Bank (ECB), and past Chair and Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)” — not too shabby… So, it’s not just luck, it’s also being ready and opportunistic!
And almost 2,000 years ago, one of the most famous Roman philosophers, Seneca, said: “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity”. His brilliant quotes inspired the entire plethora of “derivative” quotes about luck, such as: “Some say opportunity knocks only once, that is not true. Opportunity knocks all the time, but you have to be ready for it” — Louis L’Amour.
Regardless of how much success probability one might assign to each condition, I suggest a simple 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 rule. And although Donald Rumsfeld once famously said: “All generalizations are wrong — including this one” — there is no doubt in my mind that Readiness, Opportunism, and Luck are equally important.
So, even with ZERO luck, your probability of success is still above 66%. It beats the 50% probability associated with flipping the coin… By following the same logic, if you’re well prepared but still hesitant to take advantage of the unfolding opportunity — in the absence of luck, your success probability drops to 33%. In similarity, “Lady Luck” may cause a comparable predicament — if you’re ready to act but not well prepared to take full advantage of being a first-mover…
For such reasons, during my frequent interactions with a large number of seasoned CEOs — I often emphasize the fact that busy executives habitually don’t have the luxury to capitalize on rising opportunities. It requires preparation — which takes time that they don’t have.
And since radical innovations rarely follow a linear path — CEOs must time and again be prepared to act quickly in order to turn the opportunities into a lasting success. And even if you’re a lifelong learner, your existing skillset may not be enough to make the right decision — quickly and confidently.
When CEOs don’t know when to pivot, or how to take advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Analytics — it is regrettable to all the stakeholders. Not asking for help — is UNFORGIVABLE. So, for years, I’ve been advising CEOs to build their own Personal Advisory Boards!
I often draw an analogy between the AI and the … spreadsheets. Both are TOOLS! Spreadsheets didn’t eliminate accountants, and AI’s innovation is not going to eliminate many of the jobs we currently hold. However, the same way accountants embraced the spreadsheets and ditched their electronic calculators — C-level executives must embrace Data Analytics and AI tools!
My message is equally important to CEOs and to their financial backers: BOD members are not your friends — they are your investors! The only impartial advice to CEOs may come from… the Advisers they choose! In fact, those who are truly open to guidance end up solving their problems much better than they would have on their own. And even by offering a sounding board, it may help CEOs clarify and sharpen their own thinking. It also couldn’t hurt if the advisor also brings a solid data mining experience with him, or her to the table.
As I mentioned so many times before, Digitization and Artificial Intelligence are causing the greatest disruption of global markets and their technological transformation of the last 50 years. Solving the problems and finding the best solutions involves as much domain-specific knowledge and experience as it does Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. And it starts… with understanding the value and the limitations of data — regardless of how many domain-specific experts CEOs employ.
With hundreds of billions of neurons and connections in our brains, I encourage CEOs to remember the importance of striking the balance between relying on a Silicon Brain vs. their own experiences stored in their own synapses. A word of encouragement: remember that even the brain of a fruit fly contains 25,000 neurons and 20 million connections.
Still not convinced? Please, read my previous post entitled:
· On AI, Autopilots & Self-Driving Cars….Respect The Bee!!!
And yet, the more you dig inside the training and testing sets — the more you realize the difficulty of creating adequately balanced representations. It needs to be fully considered at all times — before, during and after the analysis is complete. My frequent advice to CEOs: ask not only of what has been incorporated inside the training and testing sets — but also what is missing. You’ll be glad you did… If your training sets are not including at least an equal number of POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES — the results will be lopsided and heavily biased.
Already 30 years ago I demonstrated such importance while developing AI-based Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems for the banking industry. At that time, I used Back Propagation Neural Networks. And my CONTEXT explanations were as follows:
· You can look at the individual pixels on a page to recognize what’s printed on a bank cheque — but your accuracy is going to be quite poor (Just try to look at a printed page very close to your eyes and see how well you’re doing. All you see is a bunch of black and white dots in front of your eyes)
· To add more CONTEXT, increase the distance of the printed page from your eyes — so that you can also see the interconnections between the adjacent characters. And by moving further away from the page, you begin to see the words. And yes, the overall accuracy of the OCR improves dramatically at such point, too
· But wait, if you begin to incorporate linguistics and Natural Language Processing as a post-processing stage — you’re about to achieve the highest recognition accuracy possible. It all happens due to the linguistic CONTEXT that you just added to the mix
It’s similarly applicable to other domains, too — but my printed page analogy was quite “easy” to demonstrate in real-time… This is EXACTLY why I strongly encourage many CEOs to bring a competent ADVISOR on board that thoroughly understands the aspects of their Business AND AI — or, as I call it: The BusinessAI™.
And as one of the most experienced BusinessAI™ veterans on the planet, I show CEOs how to do it! But don’t forget: yes, AI is very powerful and can assist in the decision-making process — but so are intuition, experience, know-how, and good judgment…
Oleg Feldgajer is President & CEO of Canada Green ESCO Inc. Oleg is positioning the company to become a leader in financing AI-enhanced green energy projects and ventures. CGE’s mission is to guide DISRUPTIVE businesses in ENERGY & TRANSPORTATION toward profitable business models. Oleg is passionate about such a mission and firmly believes that without AI-based innovation, we will all prematurely choke on polluted air and dirty water. CGE delivers 100% financing (levered and unlevered) to its clients — and utilizes large equity pools, and non-recourse debt. Oleg offers creative, fresh ideas to open-minded businesses — that embrace both: logic AND opportunistic intuition. CGE stands against mediocrity & its modus operandi is quite simple: If CGE is not invited to join your BOD or Advisory Board — we failed!
