In favour of accidents and fairground ducks

"Give me lucky generals," Bonaparte allegedly said but probably didn’t … Another quote that is often attributed to Napoleon, but there is no evidence to suggest he ever said the words. If he did, then as an avid amateur historian he probably based them on something Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of France in the 17th century, said. Mazarin had noted that one must not ask of a general “Est-il habile?” (“Is he skillful?”), but rather “Est-il heureux?” (“Is he lucky?”) But let us imagine he did say it.

The emperor did not trust skill, or training, or brains. He didn't really know why some generals won and some seemed to lose. He chose the lucky ones. In war and in business chance can eclipse the best of battle or business plans.

Has a CEO ever stood up at their shareholders’ meeting to say, “I would like to present you with my plans and vision for the coming year most of which will be made irrelevant by chance events that are beyond my control… but don’t worry I was born lucky?” This is probably not the most reassuring message to the gathered throng at the AGM. Shareholder money is often in the hands of fate, not the board. The corporate leaders may make the important decisions, but they do not have total control over the return on investment.

We do well to heed the truth in the Yiddish saying ‘when man plans, God laughs’*. It would take a brave and truthful leader to say it straight – “…we haven’t a clue what accidents will befall us this year over which we have no control whatsoever, but we look forward to telling you how we profited from them and how we made the most of it… Thank you.”

Napoleon for some was the military genius of his age and yet for all his plans at Waterloo some claim it was not Wellington and his allies that won the battle but ‘the rain’ which delayed Napoleon’s attack and gave the English time to strengthen their defensive positions and the Prussians time to catch up. The rain changed the course of European history. The rain was an accident - a specific, identifiable, unexpected, unusual and unintended external event which occurs in a particular time and place, without apparent or deliberate cause but with marked effects - that was not in Napoleon’s battle plan. Napoleon believed in lucky generals, and at Waterloo even their luck deserted him. Leading a company, finding the next technology breakthrough, breaking all sales records are helped when luck and accidents are on your side.

If only the world could be clinically and totally planned. So often it is the chaos rather than the plan that has the last word. Something Robert Burns captured in the poem ‘To a Mouse’, (On Turning up Her Nest with a Plough) by Robert Burns (1759 - 1796) ?

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft a-gley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promised joy.

Still thou art blest, compared wi' me!

The present only toucheth thee:

But, oh! I backward cast my e'e

On prospects drear!

An' forward , tho' I canna see,

I guess an' fear!

Think about it. The defining moments of our life are sometimes planned but often they are not. Chance often changes our plans completely. When we think we are most in control is when events have a habit of reminding us chaos matters. Can we spot these moments, these doors to a different possibility, different futures that rise like fairground ducks in a shooting gallery to be briefly in our sites, to be taken advantage of or lost for ever? Accidents will change the direction we take. Accidents can appear to be irrelevant or even malevolent but often accidents give us the benefits of serendipity.

Serendipity is defined as the ability to recognize and evaluate unexpected information and generate unintended value from it. The word derives from Serendip the old Persian name for Sri Lanka. 'The Three Princes of Serendip' is an old Persian fairy tale about three men who were on a mission but they always found something that was irrelevant but needed in reality. They discovered things by good fortune and sagacity.’**

More than an inconvenience, accidents are often essential to success. Being open to ‘strategic serendipity’ is a competitive advantage.

Success is often what happens when we are trying to do something else. Valuable accidents happen when we have intention. Take this example of the discovery of Roquefort cheese. The shepherd who discovered it had more than sheep safety on his mind and certainly wasn’t planning to find a new variety of cheese – that was an accident. According to the legend, a young shepherd fell in love with a shepherdess. He decided to follow her leaving behind him a piece of cheese and of bread in a cave where he was sleeping at night. On his return, he could see that the cheese was covered with mould. The mould was coming from the combination of the bread and the cheese. Being too hungry, he decided to eat it any way. He found that it tasted delicious and thus, the Roquefort was born.

Discovery itself is served well by the accidental component – Columbus was searching for a quicker route to the East by sailing West and bumped into the Americas; Fleming accidentally contaminated a bacteria culture with airborne mould spores.*** The ubiquitous microwave the result of radar developed to spot ME109 night fighters, not to solve the perfect ready meal conundrum.

In conclusion it appears that for all our worthy planned endeavour whilst essential, this is not the only factor at play in our success. It is a mistake to have a purely determinist vision of our business strategy. Often serendipity, chance and accidents that play a bigger hand. We are wise to remember that as we pursue our purpose, we invite accidents and accidents are our opportunity. In business and in life and for a lucky few chaos matters.

* Jewish proverb. Paraphrase of psalm 33.10 “The Lord brings the counsel of nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples.

** The word serendipity was coined by, Horace Walpole on 28 January 1754 in a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann (not the same man as the famed American educator), an Englishman then living in Florence. The letter read,

"It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a camel blind of the right eye had traveled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand serendipity? One of the most remarkable instances of this accidental sagacity (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for, comes under this description)

***?During World War I, he was an army doctor and studied wound infections. He observed that antiseptics injured the body cells more than they injured the microbes. He felt that there should be some chemical that could fight microbe infection, such as that found in wounds, which were caused by exploding shells. He realized that a substance was needed that would harm bacteria but would not harm body cells. In 1928, one of Fleming’s staphylococcus bacteria cultures became exposed to the air and became contaminated by a mold. He noticed that the bacteria had been dissolved in the area of the culture surrounding the mold. He believed that the mold had produced a toxic substance that inhibited the growth of harmful bacteria. He named this substance penicillin, after the penicillium notatum mold that it produced. This substance was not toxic to humans or animals. Fleming discovered this substance quite by accident and is quoted as saying, “One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.” In 1929, the results of Fleming’s work were published in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology