So . . . I had an interesting discussion with a friend over the weekend about the role that luck plays in success. I took the position that luck is instrumental and indispensable in any success, whereas he was of the opinion that talent/skill/ability mattered far more. As the discussion went on, I found myself in a familiar position, that of having to explain that the fact that luck is necessary to success doesn't mean that talent isn't. Allow me to explain with the example of Warren Buffett and Nicholas Nassim Taleb.
Taleb is the author of The Black Swan (among other books) and is known to strongly hold the luck-is-important position in this argument. In an interview he explained that Buffett could not have attained the success he did without good fortune in addition to investing skill and talent. This was subsequently reported and quoted as Taleb claiming that Buffett's success was solely due to luck and that he has no talent. This is completely inaccurate and is based on the fallacy that talent and luck are at opposite ends of the same spectrum.
It is important to note that success is asymmetric; it is much easier to fail than to succeed (just like it is much easier to destroy a beautiful piece of art than to create one). In order to succeed you need both talent and luck, but in order to fail only one needs to be absent. I have used that favorite tool of management consultants, the two by two matrix, to illustrate:
To argue otherwise (i.e. that talent leads to success irrespective of the role of chance) is to argue for the inevitable success of talented individuals. Based on such a standpoint, there was nothing that was going to prevent Michael Jordan from being a great basketball player, Steven Spielberg would be a hugely successful director under any circumstance, and Einstein was going to change the world of physics regardless of any obstacle thrown in his way. This is an untenable position. All of those people had skills in their respective areas, but so did a lot of others who failed. Look at it this way: if there are one hundred authors as skilled as Stephen King who never found success (just an example; this isn't about whether King is a good writer or not), then talented writers have a 1% chance of success, and therefore luck plays a huge role.
(extended aside: I read a blog post on ESPN today all about how talent is actually based on hard work. This would seem to contradict my own post on the matter from a little while ago, but it actually fits this model quite well. Imagine the same matrix as above, but instead of "luck" and "talent", put "hard work" and "innate talent." You need both to succeed. The new matrix would be subordinate to the one above, with only the high-hard-work and high-innate-talent quadrant translating to "high talent" on this matrix, and therefore still subject to the whims of chance).
There is also a cyclical argument here, where success begets more success, so someone like King or Buffett can absorb losses or failures, whereas someone who never found success in the first place cannot. So the fact that Chuck Lorre has a string of successful (ugh) TV shows doesn't necessarily mean he is a fantastic TV producer, but at least partially that he has more opportunities than an unknown.
Hopefully you got something positive out of this: if you're a success, you have talent (almost certainly) and if you have yet to find success, you may have talent (and just bad luck). More on the role of luck in our endeavours throughout this week.
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