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Is Luck Random — or Can You Cultivate It? | Christian Busch | TED - Video học tiếng Anh
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Is Luck Random — or Can You Cultivate It? | Christian Busch | TED
Is Luck Random — or Can You Cultivate It? | Christian Busch | TED
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0:04
On January 7, 2025,
0:06
our house, my wife's parents' house
0:09
and most of our neighborhood burned down to the ground.
0:12
On that day, I was about to submit a paper to a major management conference,
0:16
and like a rookie,
0:17
I had left it to the last hour and was stuck in the uploading queue.
0:21
That's when the evacuation order came in
0:23
for the LA wildfires in Pacific Palisades, where we lived.
0:27
I found myself outside hosing down the house with one hand
0:31
and holding the laptop with the other,
0:33
desperately trying to get that document to upload.
0:36
At that point, I thought that was my biggest problem.
0:39
Turns out it wasn't.
0:40
The document did upload.
0:42
The hosing, however, did not work,
0:44
and 24 hours later, our house was gone.
0:47
I'll never forget the firefighting planes
0:49
flying so low overhead as we evacuated.
0:52
It felt like a really bad Hollywood movie.
0:55
My wife was pumping breast milk
0:56
as we were trying to get our newborn to safety
0:59
and our toddler from preschool.
1:01
That night in the hotel,
1:02
as we tried to act as normal as possible towards the kids,
1:05
my then-three-year-old daughter looked up and said,
1:08
"I want to go home."
1:10
You know, I've researched, taught
1:12
and worked on the unexpected for over a decade,
1:15
and I've seen a fair share of unexpected events myself.
1:18
But this hit on a whole new level.
1:20
In the days that followed, I tried to focus on the things
1:23
that I could control.
1:24
And surprisingly, there were micro-moments of joy,
1:27
like unexpectedly bumping into old friends in the hotel that we evacuated to.
1:32
And that experience was an unexpected
1:34
and certainly not wished-for opportunity
1:36
to practice the very serendipity mindset framework
1:39
that I had been working on,
1:41
and that can help us navigate those kinds of situations.
1:44
More on that later.
1:45
But first, let's talk about bad luck.
1:47
It all felt like really bad luck.
1:50
But when I reflected on it, I realized it was more than that.
1:54
It was zemblanity.
1:56
Zemblanity is when something unlucky, unwanted
1:59
or undesired happens by design
2:02
because it's already built in.
2:04
It seems unexpected and like bad luck,
2:07
but in hindsight it was to be expected and avoidable.
2:10
In our case, the wildfires and the winds were the trigger,
2:15
but the real misfortune was already built
2:17
into the fragile system all around us.
2:19
There was a lack of water in the water reservoirs and hydrants,
2:23
a limited pre-deployment of fire trucks in the area
2:26
despite the early warnings.
2:28
Brush wasn’t cleared in the area, and a complete lack of coordination.
2:32
It wasn't just one thing.
2:33
In retrospect, we realized
2:35
that it was a space of infinite negative possibilities
2:39
where eventually misfortune was inevitable.
2:43
The thing is, even when you try to do the right thing,
2:46
in the system around you,
2:47
zemblanity can still be baked in and you get caught up in it.
2:51
What happened to us wasn't just bad luck.
2:54
It was a pattern that I've seen everywhere,
2:56
from wildfires to boardrooms to living rooms.
2:59
The thing about zemblanity is it’s not just out there in big systems,
3:02
like in the wildfire case.
3:03
We see the same in companies with toxic corporate cultures,
3:07
where it's just a matter of time that disaster strikes.
3:09
And sometimes even in our own minds.
3:12
Zemblanity is when we create our own bad luck.
3:16
Take the traveler who leaves for the airport
3:18
with exactly the time it's needed to get to the airport.
3:22
Any small unexpected thing, like a minor traffic jam,
3:25
and suddenly, the flight is missed.
3:28
Or take the old man who is told to use his walking stick.
3:31
He doesn't.
3:32
One day he "unexpectedly" falls down the stairs.
3:35
It might seem surprising in the moment, but it was to be expected.
3:39
Zemblanity seems like bad luck, but it's already built in all along.
3:45
Now before I go deeper into this,
3:47
I want to ask you a question.
3:50
In the room, who of you considers yourself to be a lucky person,
3:53
please raise your hands.
3:54
And at home, a mental hand-raise works too.
3:57
OK, quite the lucky room, actually, well done.
3:59
No worries, I won't ask the unlucky ones.
4:01
We'll focus on the lucky ones for now.
4:05
Those of you now who said
4:07
you consider yourself to be a lucky person,
4:09
who of you thinks they had some sort of role in it?
4:11
Please put all modesty aside.
4:13
Who thinks, hands up, had some sort of role in it?
4:15
OK, still quite a few.
4:16
Alright, so that's interesting, right,
4:18
that on one hand, we know that luck is random,
4:21
but on the other hand,
4:22
already Louis Pasteur told us that it may favor the prepared mind.
4:26
In order to visualize this, let’s look at the Luck Matrix.
4:30
The Luck Matrix shows us the four different types of luck.
4:33
Here, on the lower left, we see bad luck.
4:36
Bad luck is something negative, unexpected, that happens to us.
4:40
It happens to us, you can never blame anyone for bad luck
4:43
and it creates a lot of societal inequality.
4:46
Good luck, here on the lower right, is something positive.
4:49
It happens to us, we didn't work for it.
4:51
Just great if it happens.
4:53
Zemblanity is the misfortune by design
4:57
that we built into fragile systems or into the pattern and habits
5:01
that kind of then ultimately lead us to disaster.
5:04
And then the thing that has driven our research for the last decade
5:07
is serendipity.
5:09
Serendipity is the active luck
5:11
that depends on how we engage with the unexpected.
5:14
Blind luck happens to us,
5:16
and active luck, serendipity, can be cultivated.
5:20
Imagine you have erratic hand movements like I do.
5:23
Then you spill a lot of coffee, right?
5:25
So imagine you accidentally spill coffee over the person next to you.
5:29
That person looks at you slightly annoyed,
5:31
but you sense there might be something there.
5:33
You don't know what, you just think, oh, that could be an interesting person.
5:37
And now you have a couple of options, right?
5:39
One is to just say, "I'm so sorry."
5:41
You walk outside and you think, "Ah, what could have happened?"
5:44
Another option is you start that conversation
5:46
and that person becomes the love of your life
5:48
or your cofounder or you name it.
5:50
The point is, the eventual outcome, good or bad,
5:53
depends on how we engage with the unexpected.
5:56
And that's where serendipity emerges.
5:58
Serendipity really is this unexpected good luck
6:01
that results from unplanned moments
6:03
in which our actions lead to positive outcomes.
6:06
Let's look at an example.
6:07
In 1968,
6:09
Spencer Silver was trying to develop a stronger glue.
6:13
Accidentally, he developed a weaker one.
6:16
Seemed useless in the moment,
6:18
until a couple of years later,
6:19
his colleague Arthur Fry was using that weak glue
6:23
to avoid having his bookmarks falling out of his church hymnal.
6:27
That seemed quite useful.
6:29
The Post-it note was born
6:30
and became one of 3M's major products.
6:34
Lots of examples out there of serendipity, right?
6:36
From Velcro to microwave ovens
6:39
to how people unexpectedly find love or their apartments.
6:42
And a lot of times also
6:44
when crises become the inflection point for something in one's own life.
6:48
The point is that over the last decade we've studied serendipity,
6:52
all these different stories of serendipity,
6:54
and tried to understand, is there a pattern behind that.
6:57
And it turns out there is.
6:58
It's always the same process.
7:01
There is an unexpected serendipity trigger, which is random, right?
7:04
So the coffee spill or the weak glue.
7:08
But then we have to imbue meaning in it.
7:10
We have to connect the dots,
7:11
we have to see what could be in that moment,
7:13
and then we have to materialize it, right?
7:15
It's not enough to just think, "This could be the love of my life."
7:18
You've got to actually go on dates, right?
7:20
And so the point is, once we look at it as a process, we can influence it.
7:24
We can first learn how to see more serendipity triggers
7:28
to try to focus on what is the information hidden
7:31
in this good- or bad-luck moment.
7:34
You know, for example, asking in weekly meetings,
7:36
what surprised you last week?
7:38
Very simple question,
7:39
but then people start to focus on,
7:41
is there some information in this, kind of, unexpected event
7:44
that has just been happening here?
7:46
Second, we can learn how to "seed" more serendipity triggers.
7:50
And I'm not suggesting you spill more coffee.
7:52
There [are] other ways,
7:53
one of which is, at an event like this today,
7:56
to put some rich information points out there, right?
7:59
When someone asks the dreaded “So what do you do?” question,
8:02
saying something like,
8:03
"Hey, I'm Christian Busch, I study serendipity,
8:05
but what I'm really curious about is parenting,
8:07
because our four-year-old just learned how to negotiate.”
8:10
And so what I'm doing here is I'm giving you a couple
8:13
of potential connection points where you could be like,
8:15
"Oh my God, such a coincidence, our kid also -- X, Y, Z."
8:18
The point is, instead of having a pitch that's unidimensional,
8:21
it's giving multidimensionality and potential dots
8:23
that other people can connect for us.
8:26
Then third, we can learn how to better connect the dots.
8:29
For example, asking ourselves in unexpected moments,
8:32
"Can I still find some meaning in this?"
8:34
And then last but not least,
8:36
we can also learn how to act more on it
8:38
because that's where we miss serendipity very often.
8:41
Think back in your life to moments
8:43
where you saw an unexpected opportunity in the moment,
8:46
but you didn't act on it, right?
8:47
So maybe it was the unexpected idea in a meeting
8:51
that you didn't bring into the meeting.
8:53
Or you were flirting with a person on the bus
8:56
when you were still single, of course,
8:58
but you were flirting with that person on the bus,
9:00
and you didn't speak with them.
9:02
And then you walked outside and think, "Ah, what could have happened had I?"
9:05
And there's a lot of reasons that hold us back in those moments, right?
9:09
But one of the major reasons is fear of rejection, right?
9:12
So in my case, for example,
9:14
my brain immediately goes to
9:15
what's the worst thing that can happen if I do this?
9:18
The sting of rejection.
9:20
One thing I've realized, though, and our research shows, is that actually,
9:24
once you start to realize that that is not the real worst case,
9:29
that the real worst case is the regret of not having tried.
9:34
That feeling of walking outside and thinking,
9:37
"Ah, what could have happened?"
9:38
And so what can be really useful
9:40
is this idea of reframing away from “What’s the risk of doing this?”
9:44
to "What's actually the risk of not doing it?"
9:46
And then we realize, the risk of not doing it
9:48
is a lot of times much higher than the risk of doing it.
9:51
So it gives us a bias for action.
9:53
Now why is this serendipity mindset,
9:55
this capacity to turn the unexpected into positive outcomes
10:00
so important?
10:01
Well because the unexpected is everywhere,
10:04
whether we see it or not, and whether we like it or not, right?
10:07
The likelihood of one specific unexpected event happening is very low, right?
10:13
It’s very unlikely that the lady here yells at me
10:17
or the gentleman here throws a peach at me, right?
10:20
That's very -- I hope that's unlikely.
10:21
I mean, you never know, but it's very unlikely in itself.
10:26
But when you add up all the possible unexpected things that could happen,
10:30
all these infinite, unexpected things that could happen out there,
10:33
it actually becomes quite likely that something unexpected happens.
10:37
And that's quite scary to me as a German, right?
10:40
We love planning, we love having a strategy and straight lines.
10:43
And then life is a little bit more like a squiggle, right?
10:46
Where unexpected events come from everywhere.
10:48
And so we have to build a muscle for that.
10:50
And that is true for good luck,
10:53
but it's also true for bad luck, right?
10:54
The same alertness to our surroundings,
10:57
the ability to connect our dots
10:59
that helps us nurture serendipity,
11:01
can also help us guard against the impacts of zemblanity.
11:04
And you know, of course, mindset is not a cure-all, right?
11:07
Our research also shows that things like education, networks, safety nets
11:12
play a huge role when it comes to opportunity spaces.
11:15
But on the individual level, for what is at our disposal,
11:18
mindset is one of the most effective tools we have
11:21
to nurture serendipity
11:22
and guard against zemblanity.
11:24
It's not toxic positivity.
11:26
It's not ignoring pain, it's not ignoring grief.
11:29
It’s accepting it, it’s working with it,
11:31
and then saying, "What can I still control now?
11:33
What can I still focus on now?"
11:35
And, you know, in our case,
11:38
there was a lot of pain around losing our house, right?
11:41
And that doesn't really go away that quickly.
11:43
I still wake up in the morning and think, how can that happen.
11:46
But alongside it, something unexpected happened.
11:49
It sparked new research.
11:51
It gave me a renewed sense of purpose, and it rallied the community around us.
11:55
I am far closer now with my in-laws, with whom we spend much more time.
11:58
And so out of the ashes, something new is beginning to grow.
12:03
Viktor Frankl, who has been a great inspiration to me,
12:06
once said that "everything can be taken from a [hu]man but one thing:
12:10
the last of the human freedoms --
12:12
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
12:15
to choose one's own way."
12:18
And I believe that's very true.
12:20
We can't pick the fires, the storms, the crises,
12:23
but we can choose how we meet them.
12:25
And that choice is where serendipity begins
12:28
as the unexpected starting point
12:30
for a new chapter and potentially a whole new book.
12:33
My hope is that we start building a world
12:37
that is designing more for serendipity
12:39
and guards against zemblanity.
12:41
And the next time something unexpected happens to you,
12:44
may serendipity be with you.
12:46
Thank you.
12:47
(Applause)
