Should we only listen to successful people?
If you are like me, you grew up looking up to successful people. We learned about them in school, read about them in books, and watched them on TV. They become celebrities. Famous people. And we all lined up to listen to them tell us how they became successful. Read their books. Watched their documentaries. After all, they did it. They broke through and did the thing that most could not. Inspirations. Surely, they have the key or blueprint on how anyone can become successful like them. Nobody wants to read about or listen to someone who failed. What sense would that make?
And society, in general, reflects that idea. We bombard the next generation with this same idea that only successful people are worth listening to. Funny thing is it creates a problem called survivorship bias. Never heard of it? Survivorship bias is the logical error of focusing only on those who “made it” while overlooking those who did not. There is a substantial loss in information when using only a small proportion as your model. You leave out essential pieces because the successful person doesn’t know them. Why? How would they know all the ways a person might fail if they actually succeeded? They could speculate of course and I am sure there were setbacks along the way but there is a big difference between speculation and actual experience. As a success, you may have no idea all the possible ways you could have failed. You know who does though? Everyone else who tried and failed. There is often more valuable information in the people that failed than in the people who succeeded.
Imagine you are trying to be the next Tom Cruise. You listen to everything he says and does. Dress like him. Cut your hair like him. Talk like him. Join Scientology. Master multiple skills. Perform your own stunts. Follow his model to the T. And you fail. Why? You aren’t Tom Cruise. There is no way for him to educate you on everything he did or did not do. He doesn’t know. Much of it could have been timing. Luck. Right place at the right time. Chance. And you know who might know better? All the people that tried to do the same thing you are and failed. Often there is more to learn from failure than success. Because success doesn’t know. How could it? Tom’s success is a product of thousands of different things coming together to give him the career he’s had. It cannot be replicated. All Tom can tell you is what he did. And that is no guarantee of success. It is entirely possible that everything he tells you is 100% accurate and still not one person will ever be successful or able to replicate his success.
The same is true of businesses. You are an upstart restaurant and try and mirror exactly what another successful business chain is already doing. Your thought is if I follow their plan and model, I too will have success. The truth? 60% of all upstart restaurants fail. But how? You did exactly what they did. You hired similar people. Paid them similarly. Served a similar menu. Used only fresh ingredients. Used the same advertising and marketing people. Mirrored their location choices. You read their book. You used their playbook. You should have been successful. What happened?
This point hits close to home for me and what I am trying to do with my school. I never was a full professor, publishing huge papers or getting huge grants or labs. No, I never reached the level of success that society would say makes me “worthy” to teach others or have you listen to me. I’m not getting approached to write a book. Think about it. How often have you discounted or ignored someone’s advice, counsel, or information simply because their “pedigree” was not high enough by society’s subjective standards? Being successful doesn’t make you right. It just reflects one possible outcome. Of many. It took me years to overcome this narrow-minded thinking before I would launch my school. I needed to grasp that survivorship bias is a huge part of society and that in no way invalidates the information or knowledge I want to pass along to others. My voice, based on my failures (and they are many), is equally as valuable as a successful person because I know what not to do. I know how to try and try and try and never break through. Never have the right timing or be in the right place. Never say quite the right thing.
No what I bring is an experience in how to fail. And that is what most people are going to do. Fail. I am speaking to the bigger audience on the most likely outcome for them. And I have a real working knowledge on all the things you should not do. The beauty of this information is it frees you up to try all the things I didn’t try instead of systematically trying everything. You can focus more energy on the unknown (and increase your probability) because you know what not to do. There is equal value in listening to people who have failed as there is in listening to people who succeeded. You need both voices and all the information you can get.
This brings me to the most important part of realizing you have survivorship bias. Realizing it is baked into society. It makes you highly judgmental. You assign higher value to information from a successful person than the people who failed. Everything that a successful person is telling you may have nothing to do with their success at all. Not one bit. They might have just been in the right place at the right time. People who fail are not less or the information they tell you less important. In fact, I would argue it is better information because it is tested, often repeatedly. Stop judging people who have failed as less. If you want to judge people (since it’s human nature), judge those who never try. Judge those who sit around and tell everyone else what they are doing wrong but have never had the courage to try themselves. Success is not the metric by which we should filter who we listen to. People who try and fail are valuable voices as well. Wake up to that fact.
Here at the Uncommon Sense school, we value all those who try. Sure, some will do better than others and experience the rewards of that success. Good for them. Not everyone will get those rewards. That’s ok. We greatly respect the person who keeps trying. The value is in the journey, not the destination. What we will not do is discount the knowledge and experience of those who keep trying. There is valuable gold in that knowledge and experience. And it behooves each and every one of us to listen to those people just as closely as successful people. My caution is listening to people who only tried once or not at all. Can they have good things to say? Sure, but it’s just information. Knowledge comes from experience, whether good or bad. Always start with knowledgeable people first.
