The Magic of Maxims—Part 3

With credit to Nassim Taleb, I’ll just go ahead and state Maxim #4 upfront, and then I’ll elaborate on it:

4. Most great innovations and outcomes are a fortuitous consequence of tinkering and not the result of proactive planning or design.

This one is critically important, IMHO, because its both counterintuitive and goes against everything we are taught. And yet applying it can be life changing.

It’s counterintuitive because our minds —little illusion machines that they are—constantly trick us. Psychologists have shown over and over how our brains habitually and unconsciously rewrite history so as to justify, explain or rationalize the present. Said another way, our minds are so conditioned to think in terms of “cause and effect”, and to look for INTENDED human causes, that we often invent them after the fact when they never even existed. We habitually conclude that outcomes were “planned” or “intended” or “designed” when, in fact, they usually were not.

And Maxim #4 goes against everything we are taught because we are repeatedly told from a young age that “failing to plan is planing to fail.” Said another way, we are regularly admonished that we can and will succeed only if our planning is good enough and we execute the plan with sufficient focus and discipline.

But history actually shows the exact opposite. Almost all of the world’s great innovations and success stories were, quite simply, flukes. They happened as a consequence of curious experimentation and tinkering rather than as a consequence of planning. I could provide an almost unlimited number of examples, but here’ I’ll mention just three.

One was the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. Bell was tinkering away in this lab trying to accomplish something completely different when his assistant, Watson, mysteriously heard Bell’s voice come through what we today would call a speaker. Both Bell and Watson were as surprised as anyone by the result. It was completely unintended.

Another example was the Post-It Note. The person who invented its magical glue was actually just tinkering away in the lab trying to invent a new form of...superglue! He failed miserably, of course, but stumbled upon something perhaps even more novel and useful.

A final example is Viagara. The inventors of Viagara were tinkering away in the lab trying to develop a new treatment for heart disease when their male patients suddenly started reporting some stiffening side effects. Viagara proved mostly useless as a treatment for heart disease, but its unintended side effects changed the world.

In short, good outcomes are mostly the result of pure luck combined with persistent tinkering. This is, in fact, the secret why capitalist economies outperform centrally planned ones. In capitalist economies, the outsized payoffs that accrue to people who stumble upon socially useful new inventions (like the telephone, Post-It Note or Viagara) incentivize constant tinkering by the masses. More tinkering by more tinkerers means more life-changing positive outcomes.

And this is also the real reason why revolutionary innovations usually occur during times of exploding populations. It’s no accident that the personal computer and related innovations were invented by Baby Boomers. Again, more tinkering by more tinkerers means more innovation. Larger populations increase the odds of stumbling upon world-changing ideas.

By contrast people in centrally planned economies are discouraged from tinkering. Not only is there’s no incentive to do so, but they are often actually criticized or punished when they work on things other than those that the central planners have deemed important. And its rare for countries with declining populations to be innovative in anything.

Quite simply, less tinkering by fewer tinkers means less good luck and less innovation.

Maxim #4 has great practical life significance. For instance, it influences greatly how I manage our businesses. Let’s take hiring decisions as an example. In my experience (and studies actually back this up), no amount of planning—of interviewing, of checking references, of scrutinizing a resume, etc.—really helps identify the “right” person for a job. Truth be told, you’ll never know whether you have the right person or not until you’ve hired him/her and he/she has engaged the work. Consequently, the faster you hire, the sooner you’ll know. Better to hire sooner and forgo the weeks or months of extensive interviews than to wallow in the illusion that you control your own destiny through an extensive interview process. If you hire the wrong person, you’ll know it soon enough and can take corrective action.

As another example, Maxim #4 informs how our businesses are organized. Managment 101 teaches that senior leadership should create carefully defined “job descriptions” that outline the roles and responsibilities of each position. Persons should then be hired for those predefined jobs, and employee performance should ultimately be measured by how well (or unwell) they fulfill the requirements of the job descriptions.

But, this approach is simply central planning run amuck! It assumes that the “leaders” in the organization have the best feel for the organization’s needs when, in fact, they usually don’t. It assumes that leaders know what tasks need to be done, and how, in order to meet the organization’s goals when, in fact, they don’t. And most tragically, it completely discourages workers from thinking for themselves—that is, from tinkering. If you’re going to get smacked every time you stick your head out of that predefined job description box, you’re never gonna “think outside the box”, are you?

In conclusion, if most success stories and innovations are flukes that result from tinkering rather than the intended result of sufficient planning, then any person or system that encourages more tinkering more quickly is more likely to succeed. Said another way, when success is mostly a consequence of luck, then the only way to have more success is to role more dice faster. Planning, design and diligence usually only get in the way and slow things down. They are often simply games we play with ourselves in order to give ourselves some illusory sense of control over our lives while excusing our reluctance to actually TAKE ACTION.

So, taking ACTION (rolling the dice) is far, far more important to one’s success and happiness than planning and design are. But when deciding which actions to take and which ones to avoid, don’t forget Maxim #1: Never risk a lot for a little. All possible actions don’t have the same potential payoff.