Villanova Championship Teaches a Principle of Success: There Is Always Risk Involved

Anyone who watched the 2018 NCAA Basketball championships saw a mighty Villanova make mincemeat of its opponents with volumes of 3-point shots from outside the arc. In its showdown with Kansas in the semi-final last Saturday Villanova set a new record for 3-pointers by two minutes into the second half, and they kept on shooting them. They set a new record for three point goals for a season as well.

In Monday's championship game it was a different story though. Against Michigan, eight of their first nine shots were whiffs. Their 3-point game had chilled and Villanova fans began biting their nails.

No worry. This didn't stop their efforts to shoot the long ball, and despite the failed shots they continued to attempt these longer shots, making the necessary adjustments to recover their magic. And here's the lesson. Success is directly proportional to one’s willingness to accept the possibility of failure. If we can’t allow the possibility of failure, we will freeze and never succeed because we are no longer moving toward a goal rather we are moving toward safety. Fear paralyzes confidence. Confidence is an essential ingredient in success.

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In my article Increasing the Odds of Success I wrote, "In short, risk is part of business; there are no sure things. Wall Street does not always lead to Easy Street. Nor does an Internet retail strategy always lead to Internet riches. As Robert Burns noted in his ode to a mouse, 'The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.'"

Risk, by definition, means exposure to danger. This applies not only to soldiers in the battlefield, but also to businesses, as well as the people in these businesses, all the way down to those ground-level grunts who actually do the heavy lifting.

U.S. Grant -- National Archives

Great leaders like General U.S. Grant knew how important those front line foot soldiers were. That is why he sometimes got as close to his troops as possible so he could assess their morale and readiness for another fight. On one occasion, before the Battle of Vicksburg, he parked his horse at the end of a very narrow bridge and watched his men walk across. He had been done his share of front line work in the Mexican War and wanted his men to see he identified with them.

He also knew the importance of initiative. Decisive action is the responsibility of leaders. It's one of the reasons General Patton would get so annoyed with Britain's General Montgomery, whom he called Monty. For Patton, "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." Why, because tomorrow never comes. Because of our tendency to overthink things that "perfect plan" never comes.

The Latin proverb "Fortune favors the bold" has been adopted by military leaders throughout history. Boldness involves a willingness to take risks. If there was no risk involved, by definition it would hardly be a bold action or maneuver.

And so it was that Villanova kept at it, shooting those long ball hoops with an almost excessive exuberance, bold and beautiful. 'Twas a season to cherish that produced a championship as well.

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“The greatest risk to man is not that he aims too high and misses, but that he aims too low and hits.” ― Michaelangelo

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

"O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!" ~Robt. Burns

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This past weekend a friend asked if I were familiar with the Dunning-Kruger Effect. I can't recall the context in which he asked this but I'd not heard of it and he explained it like this: "People who are incompetent don't know they are incompetent and it gives them an unwarranted sense of confidence."

Confidence can be very persuasive. And the whole notion dovetails neatly with other contemporary themes, including the tendency of many people to believe others who are sincere. In point of fact, sincerity is not truth. But it can be persuasive, and that's another story.

This Dunning-Kruger notion intrigued me and I went home to examine it further on Wikipedia which has a fairly extensive explanation beginning with this concise summary:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.

The bias was first experimentally observed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University in 1999. They postulated that the effect is the result of internal illusion in the unskilled, and external misperception in the skilled: "The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."

Harvard Business Review noted the study in a 2005 article on assessing performance titled "Those Who Can't, Don't Know It." There's no doubt that examples abound in all walks of life, but in many occupations such incompetence has a way of weeding itself out. Take Major League Baseball, for example. You may believe you're All-Star caliber, but if you can't field a grounder or hit a curve ball, pretty soon someone is going to notice no matter how confident you are. There's a whole stadium filled with people who can see what your skill levels are.

There are other professions, however, where skills -- or lack thereof -- are less visible. And I've begun to wonder if the Tony Robbins possibility thinkers are making a lot of their money by telling incompetents that "yes, you can do anything." Is everything really possible if we only but believe?

Reading about the Dunning-Kruger Effect helped me understand another phenomenon that has sprung up during my lifetime, these contest shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent. Having never seen these shows I can only talk from hearsay here, and am open to being corrected if I am wrong. Every once in a while I would hear about a particularly untalented person performing on the show who had to take a public blistering from acid-tongued Simon Cowell. My question would be, how did someone so lacking in talent make it to the show? Was the purpose simply to humiliate them? Now maybe Simon's trademark was humiliating everyone, but is it possible the show's producers took a measure of delight in attracting and then denigrating people especially prone to the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

Television as a medium reinforces this kind of image of leaders and spokespersons needing to show an unwavering confidence. TV viewers don't have time for thoughtful, nuanced explanations regarding the latest mass shooting or volcanic event. The camera favors those who have no doubts as to why this or that happened, why the DOW dropped eight thousand points or the forest fires are so out of control this year.

Ted Koppel's strength was probably due to his handling Nightline "against type." Take an hour to dissect an issue, not 45 seconds.

Historical Antecedents
The Wikipedia entry on this topic points out that although the Dunning–Kruger Effect was formulated in 1999, there are many historical examples of philosophers and scientists who have made similar observations. Here are but a few:
~ Confucius: "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."
~ Bertrand Russell: "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision."
~ W. B. Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
~ Charles Darwin, whom they quoted in their original paper, "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
~ Geraint Fuller, commenting on the paper, noted that Shakespeare expressed a similar observation in As You Like It: "The Foole doth thinke he is wise, but the wise man knowes himselfe to be a Foole." (V.i)).[12]

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The Bible, too, contains plenty of advice to help us keep a proper perspective on ourselves. Here's a verse from Paul's letter to the Romans: "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you." ~Romans 12:3

For the record I'm not pointing any fingers. I'm quite familiar with the illustration that shows a hand with a finger pointing. There are three others pointing back at oneself.

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Visit Wikipedia for more on the Dunning-Kruger Effect. 

Meantime, life goes on... all around you. Enjoy your weekend.

Confidence

Main Entry: con·fi·dence
Pronunciation: \ˈkän-fə-dən(t)s, -ˌden(t)s\
Function: noun
Date: 14th century

1 a : a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on one's circumstances b : faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way
2 : the quality or state of being certain : certitude
3 a : a relation of trust or intimacy b : reliance on another's discretion c : support especially in a legislative body
4 : a communication made in confidence : secret

Synonyms: confidence, assurance, self-possession, aplomb mean a state of mind or a manner marked by easy coolness and freedom from uncertainty, diffidence, or embarrassment. confidence stresses faith in oneself and one's powers without any suggestion of conceit or arrogance . assurance carries a stronger implication of certainty and may suggest arrogance or lack of objectivity in assessing one's own powers . self-possession implies an ease or coolness under stress that reflects perfect self-control and command of one's powers . aplomb implies a manifest self-possession in trying or challenging situations .

SOURCE: Merriam-Webster.com

Last night while painting I was thinking about how much our attitude impacts outcomes. For example, I paint some of my best work when I am feeling confidence as explained in the first definition, "a feeling of consciousness of one's powers." I have noticed that the more I like a piece as it nears completion, sometimes fear creeps in and paralyzes me. I fear wrecking something good, marring it beyond repair.

Perhaps this same thing happens in relationships. In a normal healthy relationship, we are ourselves, acting freely, valuing other. In contrast, the more desperate our own neediness, when there is too much at stake if the relationship fails, whether with a person or employer, this feeling erodes our confidence and paralyzes us.

An older friend (now gone) who was in real estate in the late sixties shared a story that encapsulates this very thought. He used to be quite successful at selling homes until something changed. There was an influx of housewives selling real estate as one income families morphed into two income families. Many of these women were very good salespeople in part because they were simply charming, and were having fun. Their husbands worked as bankers, accountants or other occupations with steady cash flow. My friend was a sole breadwinner, and when he failed to close a deal it was food for his family that was being taken off the table. Home buyers sensed his anxiety and became uncomfortable around him. He ultimately had to leave the business.

Earlier this year a documentary about Mike Tyson showed how he always entered the ring with total confidence. As soon as he saw his opponent he would lock eyes, before the introductions even, and search the man's face for any sign of weakness or fear. Or soon as he caught even the slightest hint of fear, his adrenalin would surge.

Time does not permit me to elaborate on the Consumer Confidence Index, youthful idealism, Napoleon, the application of confidence to the theory of "any given Sunday", or the value of confidence in mental health. Sometimes the basis of our confidence may even be unfounded, but unless it is present we be left immobilized, whether in business, sports or life.