Ben Locwin, Contributing Editor06.07.18
How often do you see individuals either pitching their services for career development in books, seminars, etc., or on the other hand, those who purchase and consume all of this content? Career trajectory manipulation-trying to modify one's career path and/or progress by constant inputs-has been around since business has existed. For example, in 1937, Napoleon Hill penned his seminal work, Think and Grow Rich, where he interviewed a number of successful business leaders (apocryphally) to try to distill the formula for achieving personal and financial wealth.
Similarly, leadership guru John Maxwell has frequently mentioned that in his younger years, he used to attempt to set up meetings with CEOs in various cities across the U.S. When he was successful in his request, he would invite his wife on the trip under the auspices of calling it a "vacation." Maxwell was also trying to find the "secret sauce" in profiling successful executives, and from this early start, has written countless books on the theme of leadership itself.
But here's the actual reality: Career progress, success, and achievement are based more in factors of providence-luck, as one might say-than they are in personal qualities.
Where Our Thinking Goes Wrong
The reason why there are so many books on success and achievement in careers is because there's a market for it. And there's a market for it because of an interesting peculiarity that exists within our individual psychology:
A phenomenon called Fundamental Attribution Error.
Simply stated, it "describes the tendency to overestimate the effect of disposition or personality and underestimate the effect of the situation in explaining social behavior."
This concept refers to the fact that when people experience an event, and typically one with a positive outcome, their cognitive machinery tries to correlate this outcome with thoughts or actions that the agent engaged in. In reality, many of these outcomes are more highly-influenced by random chance than any specific actions taken by the individual. (By the way, this also applies to some animals when they have been studied for this effect, albeit in relatively low-power and not well-controlled studies.)
For example, in one study when something bad happened to someone else, subjects blamed that person's behavior or personality 65% of the time. But, when something bad happened to the subjects, they blamed themselves only 44% of the time, blaming the situation they were in much more often.
It shouldn't be too surprising, then, to note that from an attribution error survey conducted in organizations, 50% of business people polled believed that they were in the top 10% ethically. I'll let you ponder that Pareto-Zipf relationship for a moment…
The ethics part of this psychological bias is subversive and insidious. Research from the England and Wales National Reporting and Learning System2 showed that there's, "A culture of blame and fear of retribution are recognized barriers to reporting patient safety incidents." From a total of 2,148 investigated cases, the authors found that, "In 36% of cases, those who reported the incidents attributed fault to another person, whereas 2% of those reporting acknowledged personal responsibility." What could be the motivation for this? They further note that, "Blame was commonly associated with incidents where a complaint [against the healthcare organization] was anticipated."
The takeaway here? We always try to externalize those factors that seem to impede upon our successes-that poor result was because of "them"-but we internalize those random factors which had positive cumulative effects-that positive result was because of "me".
The Role of External Factors in Careers
I know that nobody in senior management or executive roles wants to admit it, but between the triumvirate of 1. Visibility, 2. Timing, and 3. Prior Organizational Changes, who ends up filling what particular role has a great deal to do with random probability and nothing more. In fact, research into nonverbal communication has repeatedly shown that nonverbal cues within social interactions are often a stronger predictor of landing a role than prescribed technical skills.
It's also important to note that historically-valued credentials have much less of an impact than you may realize. There are more executives in major organizations who received their business degrees from non-Top Tier universities than there are who have. As a differentiating factor in the C-Suite, the name of a college or university plays very little part, as long as there is a name. Back in 2015, it was noted that of the ten execs running the Top 10 Fortune 500 companies, only one had an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League university.
It is with impunity that talent acquisition professionals and hiring managers discard resumes from a perceived lack of experience. But remember, a subjective opinion about a person's explanation of their expertise based on a brief conversation is about the worst predictor of future performance. And also, with new computer-assisted resume screening algorithms, great candidates are filtered out by not having enough keywords for the system to read. The strongest predictor of career success is emotional and social competency, which can't be observed by an algorithmic machine.
So the following factors need to intersect for a candidate: An available and appropriately-leveled role at company A; an opportunity for a random qualified candidate B to have heard of the role; a candidate who is then able to and/or interested in filling that role; proximity to maintain a desired quality of life-either a manageable commute or a relocation to somewhere socioeconomically-similar; and a number of other external circumstances that aren't related to personal qualifications.
As Woody Allen said, "80% of life is showing up." The rest can be captured in this equation:
(Pn x Su) x (Ao x Cf x Tc) = Outcome & Results
Pn = Prospective networking opportunity; Su = Showing up; Ao = Available opportunity
Cf = Cultural fit, socializability; Tc = Technical competence.
I would amend Allen's quote above because there has to be an opportunity to show up to. In that case, in the above equation, the left-side parenthetical multiplicative product represents about 80% of the total effect.
So when you see someone in a high-profile position and wonder how you could get there, know that they got there based on the influence of the above equation and many factors outside of their control. And also that you can too (probability willing). And when they took that position at some point in the past, they were just as surprised to be filling it-you just never saw the backstory.
References and Further Reading
1. Berry, Z. (2015). Explanations and implications of the fundamental attribution error: A review and proposal. Journal of Integrated Social Sciences, 5(1), 44-57. http://www.jiss.org/documents/volume_5/issue_1/JISS%202015%205(1)%2044-57%20FAE.pdf
2. Cooper, J. et al. (2017). Nature of Blame in Patient Safety Incident Reports: Mixed Methods Analysis of a National Database. Annals of Family Medicine, 15(5).
3. Jacobs, P. (2015). You'll be surprised where the most powerful Fortune 500 CEOs went to college. Business Insider.
4. Hill, N. (1937). Think and grow rich. Sound Wisdom.
5. Maxwell, J. (2007). The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. Thomas Nelson.
Similarly, leadership guru John Maxwell has frequently mentioned that in his younger years, he used to attempt to set up meetings with CEOs in various cities across the U.S. When he was successful in his request, he would invite his wife on the trip under the auspices of calling it a "vacation." Maxwell was also trying to find the "secret sauce" in profiling successful executives, and from this early start, has written countless books on the theme of leadership itself.
But here's the actual reality: Career progress, success, and achievement are based more in factors of providence-luck, as one might say-than they are in personal qualities.
Where Our Thinking Goes Wrong
The reason why there are so many books on success and achievement in careers is because there's a market for it. And there's a market for it because of an interesting peculiarity that exists within our individual psychology:
A phenomenon called Fundamental Attribution Error.
Simply stated, it "describes the tendency to overestimate the effect of disposition or personality and underestimate the effect of the situation in explaining social behavior."
This concept refers to the fact that when people experience an event, and typically one with a positive outcome, their cognitive machinery tries to correlate this outcome with thoughts or actions that the agent engaged in. In reality, many of these outcomes are more highly-influenced by random chance than any specific actions taken by the individual. (By the way, this also applies to some animals when they have been studied for this effect, albeit in relatively low-power and not well-controlled studies.)
For example, in one study when something bad happened to someone else, subjects blamed that person's behavior or personality 65% of the time. But, when something bad happened to the subjects, they blamed themselves only 44% of the time, blaming the situation they were in much more often.
It shouldn't be too surprising, then, to note that from an attribution error survey conducted in organizations, 50% of business people polled believed that they were in the top 10% ethically. I'll let you ponder that Pareto-Zipf relationship for a moment…
The ethics part of this psychological bias is subversive and insidious. Research from the England and Wales National Reporting and Learning System2 showed that there's, "A culture of blame and fear of retribution are recognized barriers to reporting patient safety incidents." From a total of 2,148 investigated cases, the authors found that, "In 36% of cases, those who reported the incidents attributed fault to another person, whereas 2% of those reporting acknowledged personal responsibility." What could be the motivation for this? They further note that, "Blame was commonly associated with incidents where a complaint [against the healthcare organization] was anticipated."
The takeaway here? We always try to externalize those factors that seem to impede upon our successes-that poor result was because of "them"-but we internalize those random factors which had positive cumulative effects-that positive result was because of "me".
The Role of External Factors in Careers
I know that nobody in senior management or executive roles wants to admit it, but between the triumvirate of 1. Visibility, 2. Timing, and 3. Prior Organizational Changes, who ends up filling what particular role has a great deal to do with random probability and nothing more. In fact, research into nonverbal communication has repeatedly shown that nonverbal cues within social interactions are often a stronger predictor of landing a role than prescribed technical skills.
It's also important to note that historically-valued credentials have much less of an impact than you may realize. There are more executives in major organizations who received their business degrees from non-Top Tier universities than there are who have. As a differentiating factor in the C-Suite, the name of a college or university plays very little part, as long as there is a name. Back in 2015, it was noted that of the ten execs running the Top 10 Fortune 500 companies, only one had an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League university.
It is with impunity that talent acquisition professionals and hiring managers discard resumes from a perceived lack of experience. But remember, a subjective opinion about a person's explanation of their expertise based on a brief conversation is about the worst predictor of future performance. And also, with new computer-assisted resume screening algorithms, great candidates are filtered out by not having enough keywords for the system to read. The strongest predictor of career success is emotional and social competency, which can't be observed by an algorithmic machine.
So the following factors need to intersect for a candidate: An available and appropriately-leveled role at company A; an opportunity for a random qualified candidate B to have heard of the role; a candidate who is then able to and/or interested in filling that role; proximity to maintain a desired quality of life-either a manageable commute or a relocation to somewhere socioeconomically-similar; and a number of other external circumstances that aren't related to personal qualifications.
As Woody Allen said, "80% of life is showing up." The rest can be captured in this equation:
(Pn x Su) x (Ao x Cf x Tc) = Outcome & Results
Pn = Prospective networking opportunity; Su = Showing up; Ao = Available opportunity
Cf = Cultural fit, socializability; Tc = Technical competence.
I would amend Allen's quote above because there has to be an opportunity to show up to. In that case, in the above equation, the left-side parenthetical multiplicative product represents about 80% of the total effect.
So when you see someone in a high-profile position and wonder how you could get there, know that they got there based on the influence of the above equation and many factors outside of their control. And also that you can too (probability willing). And when they took that position at some point in the past, they were just as surprised to be filling it-you just never saw the backstory.
References and Further Reading
1. Berry, Z. (2015). Explanations and implications of the fundamental attribution error: A review and proposal. Journal of Integrated Social Sciences, 5(1), 44-57. http://www.jiss.org/documents/volume_5/issue_1/JISS%202015%205(1)%2044-57%20FAE.pdf
2. Cooper, J. et al. (2017). Nature of Blame in Patient Safety Incident Reports: Mixed Methods Analysis of a National Database. Annals of Family Medicine, 15(5).
3. Jacobs, P. (2015). You'll be surprised where the most powerful Fortune 500 CEOs went to college. Business Insider.
4. Hill, N. (1937). Think and grow rich. Sound Wisdom.
5. Maxwell, J. (2007). The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. Thomas Nelson.