Luck vs Talent

The Accenture ad that ran in a recent issue of WSJ is a great example of marketer bullshit that actually has a grain of truth. There is a full color picture of Tiger Woods after just whacking a stupendous drive down the fairway. The copy says "We know what makes a Tiger. What separates high performers from lesser competitors isn’t just talent. It’s the way they fuse their capability and mindset." The implication is that Tiger-like success is comprised of "50% aptitude and 50% Attitude." One might might quibble with the proportions, but the significant thing here is the acknowledgement that success in Golf (and by implication all success) is a combination of stuff you were lucky enough to be born with (talent or aptitude) and the volition to apply effort in pursuit of a goal (attitude).

When we make a decision to do something, we are committing to an outcome. But it seems to me that the proclivity to make a decision that requires action on our part is native, rather than learned. We develop personalities and attributes that make us more or less unique, but we do not choose these characteristics. Rather, they happen to us.

Am I saying that everything is 100% Luck? Since I believe that aptitude is luck and attitude is luck, I guess I am saying exactly that!

This leads me to the recognition that successful people in this world should be thankful for their incredible luck. The majority of souls who have trod the dusty path of life were born into mean circumstances which virtually doomed them from their first breath.

I think the fundamental difference between Liberals and Conservatives lies in the perception of entitlement. Most conservatives consider themselves to have strong sense of morality and a high respect for fundamental values. They believe themselves to be successful, and ascribe their good fortune to a loyal adherence to "core" values. They seem to believe believe that life is like a game of Monopoly. Everyone gets the same bankroll at the start of the game. If you lose yours, that's too bad, you are out of the game. Hard cheese, old boy. Unfortunate rolls of the dice and all that. You should have bought Park Place when you landed on it.

The few lucky ones who constantly win the game - who achieve a high degree of wealth or status may acknowledge that they are lucky, but many of them seem to feel entitled to good luck, because they earned their positions through hard work, talent and perseverance. They give lip service sympathy to those that are less fortunate, perhaps they contribute to charity, but fundamentally they do not feel guilty about their luck.

Liberals, on the other hand, often seem to feel that they are not worthy of the lucky breaks that they have had. They are more likely to believe that extraordinary abilities and brainpower are mere lucky gifts, not entitlements. They feel that same attitude about people who were born to unlucky circumstances. There but for the grace of god (ie, luck) go I. Liberals really believe that life is a crapgame.
They tend to be kinder to the losers.

Now, that Tiger Woods is one lucky sumbitch. I don’t play golf, nor do I watch it on TV, but I’m sure he is really good at it. I do know that I’ve seen naked pictures of his wife and he is one lucky sumbitch.

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Which may or may not lead us to the contemplation of how Luck and/or Talent explains the recent news that former Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli is now the new Lee Iaccoca at Chrysler. (An honorable Japanese executive would have committed ritual seppuku if they were responsible for such a colossal failure, - wrecking Home Depot and making rival Lowes my personal number one hardware store. In China he would have been executed. But, Lucky Bob was born to run in America. He gets to keep his failure-reward money ($210 Million) and now has a chance to destroy yet another corporation!

I can see Ford and GM executives, gleeful at their incredible luck, slapping each other on the back and toasting Nardelli's appointment with expensive champagne - hoping that he will do the same thing for them that he did for Lowes.