Monday Morning Mumbling: Trivia

Happy Monday! If we saw you over the weekend at the WMCCAI Expo, then I hope your day was productive and enjoyable.

In any case, it’s Monday now – time to get back to work. I like to say that one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day. Inspired by our trivia game this weekend…

… today’s quote is from none other than trivia icon Alex Trebek. Here’s the quote:

“Don’t minimize the importance of luck in determining life’s course.“

— Alex Trebek

We all spend our days working hard to obtain the best possible outcomes. Whether it be in our personal or professional lives, we work hard and plan for the future to try to plot a positive course through life. And when we see success, we have a tendency to analyze it, to break it down, to try to determine what led to that success and how we might be able to replicate it. And that obviously a good strategy: if something works, we should find out why it works, and see if we can use that to our advantage. Parenting tips. Life hacks. Lessons learned. These are all top strategies for improving our outcomes.

We have to keep in mind that all this effort is dedicated to improving our chances of success. Nothing is guaranteed; remember what we talked about in this post about determining the likelihood of certain outcomes. That still leaves some percentage that is out of our control.

This is what we often refer to as luck. You can also describe it as circumstances, or outside forces, or even “fate” if you wish. But the simple fact is, despite our best preparations, and our top efforts, there are sometimes factors outside of our control that impact how things turn out.

What do I mean? Let’s take an example right from Mr. Trebek’s own game show. Recently James Holzhauer went on a historic run, reeling off 32 straight wins before being defeated. Holzhauer frequently went into Final Jeopardy! with such a lead that he could not be caught, but that one final question where anything can happen contains an element of luck. Any night where the second place contestant was within range, Holzhauer was “lucky” that the answer was not one that he didn’t know (of which there were not many) and that his competitors did know.

But here’s the thing – you could also argue that the champ was unlucky that his streak didn’t go on longer. After all, he answered 97% of the questions he responded to with the correct answer, and frequently built up such commanding leads that Final Jeopardy! “luck” was irrelevant to him. Statistically, he may have done a better job of optimizing his chances to succeed than anyone we have ever seen. But, as “Jeopardy! GOAT” Ken Jennings points out in this article, “People don’t realize how fragile a ‘Jeopardy!’ streak is. Any night could be the game with your name on it. You just never know.”

You just never know. So if we have determined that luck exists, what do we do with this information? Just give up on optimizing our chances? Live life like one big lottery ticket and hope luck strikes?

I don’t think so.

Rather, we should use this information to help hone our efforts and decide which success stories are lessons we should follow, and which ones are simply outliers we should disregard. Or, put another way and borrowing from one of the most useful books I have ever read, what is the “signal” and what is just “noise.”

Let’s do it once in the association context. A community goes years without funding its reserves. They have no money on had to prepare for upcoming needed capital expenditures. They otherwise provide for the best of everything in their community; they spend every dime they collect in assessments on current amenities, services, and contracts. They just don’t put away any money for reserves.

The roof, which has a useful life of 20 years, makes it to year 23 before completely failing. There are leaks and collapses. The association has to replace the roof at a huge cost, which would have been covered by their reserves, but they have none. They cannot pass a special assessment and are unable to obtain a loan. Things are looking bleak and the association may have to declare bankruptcy.

However, a wealthy long-time owner in the association has passed away, and bequeathed to the association a sizable amount of money, enough to replace the roof. Everything is great again.

Question: Should other associations look at this situation and think, “Obviously this means I don’t have to fund my reserves and everything will be fine,” since things worked out so well for this association?

Um, no. Of course not. This was an easy and obvious example of how luck can work behind the scenes to create results that are not typical. If your board knew only that this neighboring association never funded its reserves and was fine, but didn’t know about the wealthy benefactor, might you be tempted to follow in their footsteps? Possibly! But if you did, you would be disregarding the words of the wise Alex Trebek: you minimized the importance of luck.

This concept can help us stay on track in our own lives as well. Perhaps you look around and think, “Why is everyone else having such success? Maybe I should just quit trying so hard.” It is easy enough to do. But the problem with that line of thinking is, you are once again minimizing the importance of luck. Maybe there is a wealthy benefactor, or some other outside influence. Maybe the break or opportunity you have been preparing for is right around the corner, and you need to be ready to seize it. James Holzhauer was just an ordinary guy until he showed up on Jeopardy! and made over two million bucks.

So ignore the “noise.” Filter out the luck from your analysis. And dig in for another week of preparation – of making yourself ready to take full advantage of the situation if “luck” should be in your favor.

Have a great week everybody.