#662： The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck
Episode Stats
Summary
When you think about serendipity, you likely think of strokes of good luck that happen entirely by chance. But my guest today says that we can play a role in harnessing more lightning strikes of fortune and create the conditions to both experience a greater number of meaningful accidents and make accidents more meaningful. His name is Christian Bush, and he is the author of The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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When you think about serendipity, you likely think of strokes of good luck that happen
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entirely by chance. But my guest today says that we can play a role in harnessing more
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lightning strikes of fortune and create the conditions to both experience a greater number
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of meaningful accidents and make accidents more meaningful. His name is Christian Bush.
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He's a professor of economics and entrepreneurship and the author of The Serendipity Mindset,
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the art and science of creating good luck. We begin our conversation with what serendipity is,
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how it's different from simple chance, and is instead a kind of smart luck which requires
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acting on the unexpected and connecting the dots of seemingly random events. We then discuss the
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three types of serendipity, the obstacles to experiencing this force, and how the amount
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of serendipity you experience depends on how you frame the world. Christian explains how to develop
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a serendipity-seeking mindset, including how to intentionally see triggers for it, and we
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end our conversation with how organizations and not just individuals can take steps to strategically
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leverage the power of serendipity. After the show's over, check out our show notes at
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All right, Christian Bush, welcome to the show.
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So you are the author of a new book called The Serendipity Mindset,
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The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck. Let's talk about your background, what led up to the
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writing of this book. What started you down the path exploring luck and chance and serendipity?
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It's actually been a quite serendipitous journey. I mean, it really started when I had an accident
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when I was 18. You know, I used to be this kind of reckless teenager who, you know, had to repeat
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a year in high school. I was kicked out of school. So I was this kind of troubled kid in a way, and I
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transferred this kind of lifestyle into my driving style. And then one day I wasn't that lucky anymore,
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and I crashed into four parked cars. And I won't forget the policeman who came to the scene and he
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was like, Oh my God, he's still alive. And so this idea that I was supposed to be dead,
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that stuck with me and kind of it put me on this intense search for meaning. And, you know,
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I started reading this wonderful book of Viktor Frankl, The Man's Search for Meaning,
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which is all about finding meaning in the most dire of situations. And so it kind of
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inspired me to try to figure out what gives me meaning, what could I do in the world that somehow
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is meaningful. And so I started out as a community builder, and then entrepreneur,
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social entrepreneur, and then went to do research. And one of the things that I just found extremely
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fascinating was that the most purpose-driven, inspiring, successful people around me, they
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seem to have something in common, which was that they intuitively cultivate serendipity.
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They intuitively see something in the unexpected and then turn that into positive outcomes.
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And so I got really excited about this and it became kind of a life philosophy and a daily
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practice. But, you know, I first wanted to write a book about purpose and impact and
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related questions. And I remember pitching that to friends and saying, hey, this is my new book.
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And they were like, yeah, but you know what, do you have other things, other ideas as well?
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And so I was like, all right, well, actually, the thing I'm really excited about is serendipity.
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And so that kind of like is how the book came about. And now it's really kind of this
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bringing the last 15 years of my life into this, but also a lot of kind of the research and
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just being fascinated by this kind of life force that serendipity can be.
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Well, let's start off with definitions. What is serendipity and how is it different from
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Yeah, you know, I mean, usually when we think about luck, we think about this kind of blind
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luck, right? So being born into a loving family or things that we can't influence that much.
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But actually serendipity is all about this kind of active smart luck. So, you know,
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this unexpected good luck that comes from our own actions. And so, you know, think about this
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situation, you're in a coffee shop. And if you have erratic hand movements, as I do,
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which makes me nervous also with a microphone here, by the way, that I might flash that over
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at some point. But essentially, if you're kind of like a slightly, you know, hand gesture type
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person as I am, you might spill your coffee over the person next to you. And imagine that situation
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where you sense that kind of connection, right? You sense there might be something there.
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And now you have two options, right? Option one is that you kind of say,
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Oh my God, I'm so sorry. Here's a napkin. And then you walk outside afterwards and you're like,
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Ah, what could have been? And option number two is like, well, hey, I'm so sorry.
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I was so immersed in X, Y, Z idea. And, you know, you start talking with the person and
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it might become the love of your life. It might become a co-founder. And so really this kind of
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idea that, yes, there's something unexpected happening here, but you acted on it and you
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did something with it. You created your own smart luck.
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So let's talk about what makes a serendipitous thing serendipitous. Like what are the factors?
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Like what makes something, you know, what are you looking for when you're, when the scientists,
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in your research, like what makes something serendipitous as opposed to, you know, just
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Yeah. It's really this idea of saying, what is something that unexpectedly happens, but
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where we then see some kind of action. And I think that's, you know, coming a lot to that
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question of what is, what could have happened? Like this situation I just mentioned with,
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you know, when you spill that coffee, like we might all have that same situation, but then
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the question is, how do we act on it? What do we do with it? And if you think about how
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serendipity unfolds and, you know, examples of Viagra, for example, where, you know, you
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have people who researched a completely different medication and China, essentially, they gave
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people medication and they were like, okay, great. Like, it seems like people have some
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kind of movement in their trousers. I mean, male participants. And so, you know, now a lot
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of times what we might do is we might be embarrassed or we might see it as a failure that's like
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our medication doesn't really work or has these kind of side effects, but they did the
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opposite. They said, okay, that's unexpected, but you know what, maybe there is something
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in there that could help a lot of people. And so that's how Viagra evolved as a kind of
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like in a way out of a quote unquote experiment that didn't work or that kind of like had a
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weird side effect. And so that's really what I'm most fascinated by when looking at serendipity
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that a lot of times it's really kind of trying to trace how did something positive
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that's positively unexpected emerged? What was behind that? What was the process behind
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that? So was it really just this incidence or was it really something where someone had
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to see something in the unexpected and then connect the dots? And that's really my fascination
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for us in terms of saying, what is that kind of connecting the dot piece that needs to be
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Well, so in the book, you talk about there's like a trigger with an event. So in the Viagra
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example, like the trigger is like people started noticing dudes were getting erections after
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taking this heart medication and it was unanticipated. But then you also talk about this idea
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Yeah. So that's really about this idea of like, that we have to connect that with something,
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right? So if we, let's, you know, this example of seeing that there's some kind of erection
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happening or the example that there's a coffee that spilled or, you know, other examples where
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there's something unexpected happenings, that's the trigger. That's the initial thing that happens.
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But then it's up to us to connect that to something, to some kind of problem. You know,
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in the case of Viagra, it was the problem that a lot of people in the world have that bigger
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not having erections. In the case of the coffee shop, it might be, you know, it might be nice to
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find a love partner. So something that somehow makes those dots meaningful. And so that's what
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serendipity is a lot about. This kind of idea that we make accidents meaningful, but also,
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and I think that's something that we'll probably talk about later, we can also create more meaningful
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accidents, but it's really about saying we need to somehow imbue meaning in that kind of trigger
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Yeah. So there's three kind of broader types. One is really this kind of Archimedes serendipity
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when you're looking for something specific already to solve a problem, right? So maybe you want to
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find a specific job or something where in a way you're looking for something already, but then there's
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something unexpected, like some unexpected kind of way of getting into the company by another friend
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that you didn't even know worked there. Or, you know, in this example of Archimedes, the reason why it's
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why it's called that, where he was essentially, you know, trying to figure out for the king,
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if the crown that the king got was really, you know, full of gold, or was there some kind of fake
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crown going on there? And so he didn't find a solution to that problem, how to know that it is
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gold. And so he would go to the baths and he would kind of go into the baths. And then he realized,
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oh, wow, when I go here into the water, the water is essentially, the water levels rise as people
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lower themselves into it. And they rise differently depending on, you know, how much weight they have.
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And how big they are. And so essentially, he realized that if he could like measure or see
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how much the kind of gold replaced, if you would have a real gold crown, and then this crown, you
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could see if that would be really gold. And so in a way, he found an unexpected way to figure out what
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that was about, which is very different from the kind of post-it's node serendipity, which is more
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the kind of serendipity where, you know, you're looking for something completely different, you know,
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you're looking for maybe a job in a particular industry. And then you come across something,
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you know, in another industry, you're like, oh my God, this could work too. Or in the case of
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post-it serendipity, it's really about this idea that, you know, this guy, Mr. Spencer, he was
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figuring out like how he could develop a stronger glue. And then somehow he realized that actually,
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the only thing he created was like a sticky substance. And so he realized, hey, you know what,
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maybe I can use that as a post-it kind of like weak glue in a way. And so again, he figured out a way
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to do something useful, but not necessarily the one he was looking for. And then the third one,
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which is my absolute favorite, because it's really about this idea that life, any moment,
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any second can bring you a complete change in everything that could be for the better,
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is really that kind of thunderbolt serendipity. So this kind of being struck by something out of
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nowhere, like in this kind of example where, you know, you're not even looking for falling in love
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and in the street, you somehow, you know, unexpectedly meet someone or those kinds of
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things which unexpectedly happen and without us looking for it. And so, but all these kind of
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examples have in common that it's always this kind of unexpected thing. There's always something we
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have to do something with it, but also we need the tenacity and really kind of this grit to do that.
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And I think I've seen in my own life, a lot of times I've been held back by, you know,
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the kind of inner imposter that comes out sometimes, the syndrome or other things where
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it's really kind of, we need to stick with it. Otherwise it won't happen.
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So, okay. Serendipity is you notice a trigger and you are able to make that connection,
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connect dots on it in an unexpected way. And so it requires developing what you look at the title
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of your book, a serendipity mindset, a mindset where you start noticing those things, but you spend
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the one chapter of the book exploring the obstacles that we have in noticing serendipity in our
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lives. What are the big obstacles that prevent people from noticing those triggers and making
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those connections? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, a lot of those actually I've seen in myself as well
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and a lot in the people around me where, you know, one is really around this idea that we
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underestimate the unexpected. I mean, I remember this friend in school who would always be like,
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oh, like it's very probable that the improbable happens. And I always thought, oh, wow, that sounds
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very mysterious, but I have no idea what you're talking about. And then what I realized is, you know,
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if you think about our conversation now, right? I mean, it's very unlikely that my microphone drops
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down. It's very unlikely that the computer kind of, you know, gets off like and stops working and
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all these different types of things. But if you add up all these different things, it actually
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becomes relatively likely that some kind of glitch might happen or something. And so we tend to have
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this illusion of control that we can control a lot of things. And, you know, we get trained in
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school and business school and high school. I mean, I grew up in Germany. We get trained that we can
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plan things out. But then actually the unexpected is usually what really shapes our lives. And so
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it's really this kind of idea that we have this illusion of control, but the unexpected happens
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all the time. And a lot of times we don't necessarily see it or we don't necessarily do
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something with it. And so it's really, we tend to underestimate that, which is a pity because
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in a way we, once we start opening our eyes, like, you know, in some companies, for example,
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I work with, they start weekly meetings with a question of what surprised you last week? And
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once you ask these simple questions, people get much more open to, oh, there was something in
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the data about our marketing strategy that didn't work. Hey, great. Like we can directly do something
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about this now versus waiting for another couple of months. And so it's really this kind of becoming
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more realistic about how unexpected a lot of things will actually be. Another one, which is actually my
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favorite is around this idea that we tend to post-rationalize. So essentially, we tend to look back at
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things and we then spin them as if they were very predictable. So, you know, picture the kind of
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manager who, you know, speaks to the committee meeting and says, oh yeah, we had this and this
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plan and then we wanted to reach this and this is how we reached it. So like we tell it as a step-by-step
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story, but usually it's like a bit more of a squibble, right? Where like it's some unexpected kind of
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thing usually emerged, but we still tell it as if it was step-by-step. And so I guess we've all done
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that now with our CVs where we might say, oh yeah, I always wanted to go into this industry and
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then this. Yeah, but maybe you just ran into someone at a conference and they gave you a new
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job. And so it's really this kind of idea that a lot of times we airbrush serendipity out of our
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lives because we assume that life might be more kind of planal, but also because we feel that sense
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we have to portray more of control than we actually had. And I think that's kind of quite related also
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to the other ones, which, I mean, maybe a third one is really around this kind of idea that
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we tend to have a bit of functional fixedness. So this kind of hem and nail problem where
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as soon as you have a hammer and you want to get a nail into the wall, you will always look for
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where's the hammer so that I can get into the wall. So you wouldn't necessarily look for other
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objects that could do the same. And so that's the same for when we have one way of how we solve a
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problem usually in business or in our personal life. And we then kind of use the same model,
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the same approach, even though there might be much more effective ones. And so it closes
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us down to serendipity because we assume we have it figured out already.
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Right. Yeah. Like the functional fixedness, like that's how, that's one way goals and plans can
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get in the way of serendipity. Are you just like, well, this is the goal. This is what we're supposed
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to do. This is the plan. And if we deviate from the plan, that's a problem. But like, maybe there's
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deviations that could be better than your original plan.
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Absolutely. And you know, that's something we did a study recently with people who lead larger
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companies. And what was fascinating was, I mean, they are extremely inspirational,
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purpose-driven leaders. And one thing they all had in common is that they have a pretty good
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sense of directions or certain North Star or sense of purpose or a curiosity, just something that guides
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them. But also then they have this kind of like humility or this kind of this idea that, hey,
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the unexpected will happen. And that's okay. You know, one thing I really love about your podcast is
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kind of really thinking about like, you know, I think we've been instilled, especially as men,
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like for a very long time when you grow up, right, that you have to have this kind of very strong
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sense of exactly where you're going, what you're doing. And, you know, this kind of like type of
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masculinity that can lead us in the wrong direction because it doesn't allow for this humility sometimes
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where we would just say, hey, look, you know what, like maybe, you know, there is a certain sense
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of direction, but also we need to be able to see that we can't plan everything out. And so I think
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that's where it kind of gets, gets really into the kind of idea that if we have that sense of
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direction, a lot of times it's really also about that humility of, of being open to the unexpected.
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All right. So it sounds like to prevent goals from, you know, getting that functional fixedness,
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you just, instead of being completely goal-driven, like have a general vision, a big picture view of
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where you want to go and then be open to new ways of achieving that, that vision.
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Okay. Well, and another thing that you highlight a lot of research about how people can make those
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connections more of like, of serendipitous connections is their frame of mind, like their,
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their, how they frame the world. And there's a lot of research coming out of this where there's like
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research that shows that lucky people see the world different than from unlucky people. Can you walk
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Yeah. It's actually quite fascinating because it's really a lot about this question of how do you,
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by the way, me afraid the world already kind of predefine a lot of what will happen to you. And so
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one of these experiments is, you know, a colleague took one person who self-identifies as very lucky.
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So someone who says, good things always happen to me. And then someone who says, bad things always
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happen to me. I'm always an accident. So someone who kind of considers themselves to be very unlucky.
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And so he tells them, walk down the street, go into a coffee shop, order a coffee and sit down.
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And then we'll have our interview. What he doesn't tell them is that there's hidden cameras across
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the street and in the coffee shop. There's a five pound note in front of the door and inside the
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coffee shop, it's only actors. And then there's this kind of super successful businessman who sits
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at the table who can make big dreams happen. And so now the lucky person, the person who self-identifies
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is lucky, walks down the street, sees the five pound note, picks it up, goes inside,
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orders the coffee, sits next to the businessman. That's the table that's closest or the seat that's
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closest. Has a wonderful conversation. They exchange business cards and that's that. The unlucky person
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walks down the street, steps over the five pound note, so it doesn't see it, goes inside, orders
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the coffee, sits next to the businessman. That's the empty seat that's kind of closest. Ignores the
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businessman and that's that. Now, at the end of the day, they ask both people,
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so how was your day today? And so the lucky person says, well, it was amazing. I found money
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in the street. I made a new friend and we don't know if an opportunity came out of it, but it
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wouldn't be unexpected. And the unlucky person just says, well, nothing really happened. And so it's
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really kind of that idea that at the end of the day, they frame the occasions already in a way where
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they were more open to that kind of unexpected luck to happen. All right. So what happens though,
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if like, okay, this comes a lot down to like personality traits. There's like this idea of
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neuroticism, like neurotic people tend to be not as open to new things as say more people with more,
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more open personality. Like what do you, how do you manage that? What if you, what if you tend to be
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like a Larry David type and everything's just terrible all the time? Can you proactively change your,
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the way you frame the world so that you can have more of those serendipitous occasions?
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It's interesting because, you know, as a closet introvert, you know, I have these spikes of
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extroversion, but actually I'm quite introverted. And so I've always kind of like tried to figure
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out ways of how can you cultivate serendipity without having to always put yourself out there
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or without having to always be in a really good mood or without always having to be on and so on.
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And I feel like there's a lot of aspects to exactly your point where things such as extroversion and
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quote unquote, good energy and putting yourself out there can benefit, right? In terms of like,
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you meet more people potentially, you keep in touch with more people, people tend to reach
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out more. So there's all these things that potentially facilitate serendipity. But at the
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same time, there's a huge role for potential, like for people who are more introverted or more kind of
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close in the sense that serendipity so often comes from silent sources, from calm sources, like reading
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a book and then connecting the dots to something maybe we saw on television and then coming up with
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something or, you know, kind of reflecting on a conversation that we had at work two weeks ago,
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and now giving ourselves the reflective space to do that. And so there's a role for kind of
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introverts to have that as well. And at the same time, introverts, a lot of times or more introverted
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people also are a great complement in teams for extroverts, because extroverts tend to be out there,
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out there, out there. And then they need this kind of reflective space of introversion to really kind
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of help them ground it and make sense out of it and filter it. And so it's interesting also that
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I feel a lot of times as an introvert, like one thing, for example, that I've tried to do more and
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more is when I go to an event or so that I try to talk with the host and like the key people
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at the beginning and kind of like get them excited about an idea so that they in a way can spread
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the idea. So it's almost like you're trying to embed it with the people who can then be extrovert
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for you, even if you don't feel like doing it yourself.
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So the big part of serendipity mindset is just being more open to, or just being open to new
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possibilities. Like don't just be so narrowly focused. Speaking of like, you're describing
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that one research, that one experiment with the coffee shop, remind me another experiment you
00:19:55.560
highlighted. And it goes back to that idea of having a narrow focus and like goals or functional
00:20:00.040
fixedness was the newspaper one where they did an experiment where they told people, we want you to
00:20:05.620
find like certain words in this newspaper article. And then the article, and if you do, you'll win
00:20:11.780
X amount of money or, but, or in the newspaper, there was like a point where it said, stop reading,
00:20:16.560
you'll win $500. And like, I know I'm kind of like, I'm botching the details, but the idea of this
00:20:22.200
experiment showed that you get so focused on a goal or an idea that you, you miss other opportunities
00:20:28.960
Exactly. And that's something I feel we might actually do quite often because we, in a way,
00:20:35.300
assume that there is that kind of, you know, idea of, you know, we have to have a specified
00:20:39.660
kind of way of how we go about things. And I'll then so focused on it that we might miss things.
00:20:44.200
And so, I mean, you know, that happens in the, in the company context all the time, right? Where
00:20:48.660
imagine you're the kind of manager and you're saying, we need to cut costs. And then you send
00:20:53.640
people out to cut costs, but because you said cut costs rather than let's increase profits,
00:20:58.840
which could also be about selling more things, or it could be about many more things. Like you're,
00:21:03.660
you're kind of making people much more like narrow, not necessarily narrow minded, but narrow looking
00:21:09.160
for where there could be potential solutions. And I feel a lot of times we do that because we,
00:21:14.240
we want to decrease kind of uncertainty. We want to decrease potential risk and everything else.
00:21:19.220
But what we're really doing is we're, we're shutting ourselves down to serendipity a lot of times.
00:21:23.480
And it's really something, it comes back also to, I think, what we talked about earlier around this
00:21:28.060
idea of how do we have that kind of sense of where we're going, but are also open for these kind of
00:21:32.960
unexpected things, such as that literally in the newspaper, it might tell us that we already found
00:21:37.860
the solution. And, and, and, and that's really a lot around this idea of having a certain sense of
00:21:43.120
where we're going, but at the same time being open to, Hey, it might arise very unexpectedly.
00:21:48.740
We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:21:54.600
All right. So having more serendipity in your life requires you to be more open, more,
00:21:58.740
having a more open, more curious mindset and being able to notice potential triggers for serendipity.
00:22:04.520
But you also argue in the book that we can proactively seed triggers,
00:22:08.380
potential serendipity triggers in our lives. What does that look like? What are some ways that
00:22:13.200
Yeah, that's one of my favorites because it's all about this question of how do we create
00:22:16.780
meaningful accidents in a way? How do we create positive coincidences? And so, which is of course,
00:22:22.300
extremely counterintuitive. And so it's something where the setting or the casting hooks is all about
00:22:27.580
this question of how do we essentially let other people connect the dots for us? So there's a
00:22:32.600
wonderful entrepreneur in London, Ollie Barrett. And if you would ask him this kind of dreaded question,
00:22:37.660
what do you do, right? The question that comes at every conference at every, when you meet a new
00:22:41.820
person, he would not just answer, oh, I'm a technology entrepreneur or something. He would
00:22:46.280
say, well, I'm a technology entrepreneur, recently started reading into the philosophy of science,
00:22:51.400
but what I'm really excited about is playing the piano. And so what he's doing here is he's giving
00:22:56.120
you three potential hooks where you could be like, oh my God, such a coincidence. I started playing the
00:23:01.320
piano recently. Let's host a martinet together. Or my God, such a coincidence. My brother is a professor
00:23:05.960
for the philosophy of science. I should put you in touch. The point here is that the more we can see
00:23:10.440
these different dots into conversations about our own interests or interests of others, the more we
00:23:16.380
can then essentially have other people pick up on this and say, oh my God, such a coincidence,
00:23:19.840
this and this and this and this. That's also similar to how we can, whenever someone tells us about them,
00:23:25.280
in our head, we can always go, no, in terms of, oh, how does this connect to the people I've met
00:23:29.480
recently? How does this connect to what I'm really excited about? And what's really interesting there is
00:23:33.500
that then in every conversation, even with people we know really well already, serendipity can happen
00:23:39.040
all the time. And so it's really kind of setting these hooks consciously and being part of facilitating
00:23:43.780
that. And conversely, and the other way around, we can also ask questions differently. I mean,
00:23:48.580
we can, instead of asking, what do you do? We can ask things like, what's on your mind? Or what
00:23:53.280
inspired you about X, Y, Z situation? Or things that really kind of open up this opportunity space to
00:23:58.180
say, let's get ourselves out of this kind of routine autopilot of just kind of saying the same things
00:24:03.640
to like, what is something that could really open this space? And that's similar to really kind of
00:24:09.220
setting serendipity bombs, because it's a lot about this question of how do I, you know, put
00:24:14.560
minds out there that could go off. And so, you know, can go everything. If you're a job seeker,
00:24:19.800
so some of my students, for example, you know, they had the whole career mapped out, they had their jobs
00:24:24.420
mapped out, the internships, and everything got canceled due to COVID. And then the strategy that we used
00:24:30.800
essentially was to say, hey, look, like, identify the top 20 people that you find extremely inspiring
00:24:35.660
in your industry, but also in other industries. And, you know, go on LinkedIn, look, if you have a
00:24:41.140
like contact in common, so second degree contacts, you can send an email, so you can contact them
00:24:45.640
directly, and then send them super friendly mails along the lines of super inspired by you,
00:24:50.980
a young person who's like, big dreams, X, Y, Z. And, you know, usually what happens is,
00:24:56.180
it's a numbers game out of 20 people, like three people write back and say, oh, my God,
00:24:59.660
such a coincidence. We are currently exploring this, we don't have a job. But like, if you want
00:25:03.480
to do X, Y, Z, we can we can get back to you. And the point is, like, these are the people who then
00:25:07.820
in half a year, have those people on the radar to get back to them and say, now it fits. And so it's
00:25:12.280
really like, like putting ourselves on the radar, and like laying a couple of these minds out there
00:25:17.080
so that they could go off at any point in time. We are using LinkedIn. That's an example of using
00:25:21.560
technology to leverage technology to, to seed a lot of triggers. Exactly. And, you know,
00:25:27.040
I feel especially in COVID times where so many of us, I mean, I'm here in New York,
00:25:31.360
and I've been literally kind of in this flat for the last half year, right? And when I think about
00:25:37.000
the water cooler moments that have been taken away, you know, all these kind of moments where
00:25:40.960
you could just run into someone at work or in a coffee shop or else. And so the question of how can
00:25:46.040
we do that virtually? And so I think technology has been really interesting because you, you can do so
00:25:51.680
many things, right? Like, I mean, I've seen some companies, for example, start doing online coffee
00:25:56.500
trials, random coffee trials, where people within the organization give you one or two kind of ideas
00:26:02.420
of when they're free this week. So, hey, I have an hour between 12 and 1. And then platforms like
00:26:06.880
Slack or other kind of platforms can help randomly match people and then have them like go for a coffee
00:26:13.060
for an hour, give them an inspiring prompt. And so especially in large organizations where you
00:26:17.680
always had this, when you're a young person particularly, like you always hope that you might run into
00:26:21.580
the right person, right? And so it's kind of, that like sets you up to a lot of like random kind of
00:26:26.820
bumping into the kind of person who could really change your life, change your career. And so we can
00:26:31.280
really accelerate that online as well by facilitating some of these kind of random encounters.
00:26:37.540
One thing I can see can start happening once you start developing the serendipity mindset,
00:26:41.700
where you're more open to potential serendipity triggers, is you might start noticing too many
00:26:47.400
triggers. And you might start making too many connections. And it's going to be hard to figure
00:26:51.540
out like, should I take this? Should I take action on this connection? It's like, how do you manage
00:26:59.840
That's such a great question, because it's something I mean, I've struggled with a lot in
00:27:03.700
terms of how do you essentially not get distracted? I mean, in this case, for example, when you write a
00:27:08.620
book, right? How do you make sure that when you have approximately figured out what you want to write
00:27:12.760
about, that you don't get pulled away by other really interesting things that could like come up
00:27:17.260
somewhere and, and things like that. And so one of the things I found extremely useful is to kind of
00:27:22.320
have this North Star or this idea of, okay, what is the kind of key focus area at this point, and every
00:27:27.400
serendipity that relates to it, great, and everything else like it gets on the parking lot. So, you know,
00:27:33.020
starting like a serendipity journal where it's all about saying, this is kind of like, you know,
00:27:37.320
the current North Star or the current kind of story of self or just this idea of writing down,
00:27:42.740
what is it at the moment that is really meaningful to me, and then saying, okay, hey, I can also write
00:27:48.540
down the other areas that pop up and ideas that pop up, but they get stored here for later. So they're not
00:27:53.520
being discarded, but they're just kind of like put on the parking lot. But also really this idea then of kind of
00:27:58.600
having people around to help filter bouncing ideas off with them. And in companies, it's kind of things like
00:28:04.220
brain trusts, informal kind of, you know, three, four people who just kind of informally evaluate ideas
00:28:09.020
from time to time. So I feel this kind of filter being extremely important so to not get distracted
00:28:14.280
and to really kind of follow the North Star that's there at a certain point. And if we don't have a
00:28:19.980
North Star, then maybe this kind of idea of, oh, is there like an underlying interest at the moment
00:28:24.320
or a curiosity that these things should somehow relate to so that it makes sense. And that also
00:28:29.340
makes it easier than actually to meaningfully connect dots because we know what to connect them to.
00:28:33.240
I want to backtrack this idea of like seeding triggers. So I just had an idea, like one thing
00:28:39.480
that I've, we were talking about what you can do with when you're with people, like you can say,
00:28:42.240
well, I'm interested. My name is Brett. I'm, I got a podcast. I'm interested in this. And then you
00:28:47.060
can, maybe that's a potential hook, but I was thinking like what you can do to seed triggers for
00:28:53.100
like ideas without people. And one thing that I like doing is to get new ideas for things is go to
00:29:01.300
used bookstores. What I like used bookstores for is because there's no algorithm there, right?
00:29:07.140
Because when you go to Amazon, Amazon knows your shopping history, what interests you. And so you
00:29:10.820
can end up kind of seeing the same stuff over and over again. There's a great used bookstore here in
00:29:15.540
Tulsa, Gardner's Bookstore. Every time I go in there, I find three or four books that I never would
00:29:21.580
have saw on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble because they're, you know, they haven't been in print for a
00:29:26.660
while or they just wouldn't be on the radar. And a few of them actually turn into podcast guests that
00:29:31.020
wouldn't even been on the radar if I hadn't gone in there. And for some reason, whenever I go into
00:29:34.280
a used bookstore, like my, I'm just more open to potential books to pop out at me that I otherwise
00:29:40.140
would have probably just shut off in any other situation. That's such a cool example because
00:29:44.580
that's exactly where in a way to, to your point earlier also like how then every situation can become
00:29:51.520
a potential trigger for it, for serendipity, because we, we give ourselves the space for it, but also we
00:29:56.880
in a way see that it can be in those kinds of calm, silent sources that in a way are in books that are
00:30:03.100
in even maybe the conversation then with a bookseller or, you know, in these kinds of situations.
00:30:08.160
But even without that conversation, to your point, like the kind of real,
00:30:11.020
more silent source type approach being, being very effective. And it seems like, I mean,
00:30:15.380
that that is something, it sounds like you've been using that quite a bit or?
00:30:19.060
Yeah. Like I go, like I try to go like once a year, because that seems about the time when like
00:30:22.480
they got new stock in. And so we'll go there and we'll just, you know, books are cheap and we'll
00:30:28.000
just find lots of stuff. I find like a lot of weird stuff too. That's like even like old magazines
00:30:32.540
that might have an idea for, you know, maybe an article that I'll write sometime later.
00:30:37.280
Another useful place where you can go for like sort of a silent serendipity, like for me,
00:30:41.380
it's like serendipity bomb is like a antique stores or flea markets or, cause you just find all
00:30:46.920
sorts of weird stuff and you other, you wouldn't find on Amazon. You're not going to find it,
00:30:51.820
the shelves in Walmart, but you're just going to find just old random stuff. And there might be
00:30:56.140
an idea there for something. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's fascinating. Cause I feel if you
00:31:00.640
think like throughout history, how like the really like brilliant minds, right from DaVinci to others,
00:31:05.920
how they came up with their most brilliant ideas, it would literally be, they observe birds or they
00:31:10.900
observe something. And then they're like, Oh my God, birds are flying in this and this way.
00:31:14.600
That is what I could use for my research here. Or like, you know, this idea that in a way we then see
00:31:19.340
also kind of, we see particular like patterns that we can maybe transfer also to our area.
00:31:24.540
And so I feel like there's, there's so much in there in terms of giving ourselves the space to
00:31:28.340
observe in, you know, to your point, like antiques and even like just sitting out there and observing
00:31:34.320
people in the street and, and, and really kind of seeing that as an opportunity. And one of the
00:31:38.180
things, I mean, we haven't talked about yet, but like what, what is so fascinating about
00:31:41.800
serendipity is, is this incubation time, right? That in a way you might go into the bookstore
00:31:46.380
today and you might read something or just see something. And then in half a year,
00:31:51.420
when you have a podcast guests who somehow reminds you of it, like you're like, you might have a
00:31:56.360
shower and like on a Sunday morning, and then it's like, Eureka, Hey, it fits exactly to what
00:32:00.120
they're doing. Or these kinds of things where this incubation time of serendipity, where yes,
00:32:04.320
the trigger might happen much earlier than the actually connecting the dots happens and so on.
00:32:08.760
And so that's the beauty of it that in a way, no moment quote unquote is lost because
00:32:12.300
it could always inform serendipity in the future.
00:32:15.640
Right. It's always a potential, potential connection. You never know.
00:32:19.140
So if you decide, like let's say you start noticing things, you, you start making connections
00:32:23.760
and you've put in a filter in place. You're not, you're not a deletante and scattered brain and
00:32:28.200
going all different directions. But let's say, I mean, one of the problems with serendipitous
00:32:32.340
things is that they can lead to a lot of dead ends. You don't know where it's going to go.
00:32:36.000
It could just be a complete dead end. How do you create buffer in your life so that you can handle
00:32:40.760
the potential, I'm not going to say setbacks or failures, but just something like, you know,
00:32:45.040
a serendipitous occasion didn't work out. How can you manage or sort of be able to absorb that
00:32:50.320
without it completely destroying your career or whatever?
00:32:53.680
Yeah. It's interesting because it comes a lot, I guess, to the question of how do we
00:32:58.380
build portfolios or how do we see essentially things such as a career or so more as a platform
00:33:04.320
or a portfolio type where you say, Hey, you know, if I'm working for, I don't know, Goldman Sachs
00:33:10.100
and I've been working on a project that didn't 100% work out or something. How can I reposition
00:33:15.060
myself within that company with something that relates to something else, but do that
00:33:19.680
in a way that is low risk? So a friend of mine, what she does, for example, is when she works
00:33:23.640
on projects, she always tries to kind of build in that idea that it's about experimentation.
00:33:28.300
And so she frames like every new idea she frames already in a way that is not about, I'm betting
00:33:34.600
my whole life on this. I'm betting whole my passion on this. I'm betting like everything on it
00:33:38.380
in terms of energy, like that's of course important, but she's also kind of framing it directly
00:33:42.640
as this is a new journey. This is something that's important. And so she sets herself up
00:33:47.840
for if it doesn't work out, like she can frame it around experimentation. She can frame it
00:33:52.860
around like it's something that just didn't work versus like it's something that makes
00:33:57.240
me a failure or else. And I feel unfortunately like we've created this culture, I think, of perfection
00:34:03.040
where everything that doesn't work out seems to be a sign that someone is a failure and like
00:34:07.540
kind of like an attribution to someone versus saying, no, we actually, you know, all human
00:34:12.680
beings that experiment and that learn. And I think everyone who's a parent among us, like
00:34:18.300
probably also can relate to that question. I mean, I'm not yet there, but I've had a lot of
00:34:22.300
conversations with parents around how do you essentially, you know, rubber stamp forward and
00:34:26.600
learn from kind of the things that don't work. And I feel that kind of mindset being really about
00:34:31.060
building in the buffer already by the way we frame it versus like saying, oh, like if it
00:34:35.960
doesn't work, like everything will fail. And it's interesting because maybe also from that other
00:34:40.500
perspective, then how life in itself constantly leads to some kind of dead ends, you know, in
00:34:45.500
terms of, I mean, I feel when I look back on my life, I've had so many quote unquote situations
00:34:49.500
of bad luck where in the moment it felt like really bad luck, but then actually it turned into
00:34:54.100
good luck again. And so I will never forget actually when I handed in the first draft of the
00:34:58.600
manuscript, I went to the publisher and I was like, hey, here, like here's the manuscript.
00:35:02.420
I'm so excited about it. And they were like, hey, look, we really like it, but we need more
00:35:06.020
love stories. And I was like, I don't know if I'm as the 35 year old, like single guy back
00:35:11.060
then, like, you know, if I'm the kind of person to tell people about love and they were like,
00:35:15.220
no, no, but let's see if we can find a love story. And so I had a meeting right after that
00:35:18.760
with an ex-girlfriend of mine, who's a very close friend of mine now. And so I asked her, so,
00:35:23.120
so, hey, I need a love story. Do you know of any love story? And she was like, well,
00:35:27.120
our story. And I was like, what do you mean our story? And so she was like, look, like we
00:35:30.920
serendipitously met in a Starbucks. We kind of, you know, went into a conversation. We made
00:35:35.480
emerge into a beautiful relationship and, and we're not together anymore, but we put each other
00:35:40.000
like on a beautiful trajectory emotionally. We connected each other to really nice people who
00:35:44.560
then led us into our new lives. And so it's kind of this, this whole idea that also the question of
00:35:49.420
what is success? Like is success of a relationship that you're still together or is it that you maybe put
00:35:54.280
each other on different trajectories? And so, so, so, so the point being that bad luck in the
00:35:58.560
moment, breaking up could also again now lead to good luck in the long run. And so really looking
00:36:03.660
at things from a long-term perspective also, I feel helps to, you know, de-risk the moment because
00:36:08.400
the moment itself probably is not really defining us over a longer period of time.
00:36:12.260
No, I think that's a good point. It's all about that frame of mind. It all goes back to that
00:36:15.960
framing things. I remember from my own life when I was in law school, this is when I started
00:36:20.760
The Art of Manless. It was originally a blog. It's still, we still write text content, but
00:36:23.940
then it turned into a podcast. But when I was in law school, I applied for some internships,
00:36:28.600
some summer internships with a big firm here in town. And like, you know, basically if you
00:36:33.820
get that summer internship, the idea is like they would offer you a job at the end of the
00:36:36.900
summer. I thought I was like, I was going to be a shoo-in and I worked really hard and I
00:36:41.580
didn't get picked. And I was at the moment, I was like, man, this is terrible. This is
00:36:45.660
devastating. This is awful. But I think if I had gotten the job offer, I wouldn't be
00:36:51.680
talking to you right now. I wouldn't be doing this. I would have been an attorney in Tulsa
00:36:58.440
Yeah. And isn't that the fascinating thing about life? When looking back, how a lot of
00:37:02.740
times those moments where we felt, oh, this is bringing me into a really bad kind of X,
00:37:09.900
Y, Z, which actually turned out to be, to your point, I'm sure you live a much more meaningful
00:37:13.480
life now. And so it's really that kind of reframing, but also in a way, I remember a
00:37:18.860
wonderful friend of mine, he always used to say that, you know, if you look at life and
00:37:23.220
you have 90 years to live and you really kind of look at one situation, like that a lot of
00:37:28.780
times when you kind of look back in life, like those kinds of situations reframe, like also
00:37:33.620
for yourself, like what is important to you. It's an opportunity for self to realize that
00:37:38.220
we are, you know, we think we want something to your point, like you want something in law,
00:37:42.180
but actually you realize maybe something else could be more meaningful. And so that taking
00:37:46.080
the long view in life actually also helps us to really discover more meaningful things
00:37:50.440
potentially. How can organizations develop the serendipity mindset?
00:37:54.800
It's interesting because so a lot of organizations at the moment, especially, right, like are really
00:37:58.860
scrambling to, hey, how do we cope with uncertainty? How do we cope with the idea that we can't plan
00:38:03.800
things out the way we thought we always could? And so I'm a big fan of developing practices
00:38:09.240
internally that help us to kind of get used to the idea that we have to constantly kind
00:38:14.200
of iterate, but also, you know, back to the point that we discussed earlier, that a clear
00:38:18.860
kind of sense of direction or sense of where we're going needs to be kind of combined with
00:38:23.500
those. And so one practice, for example, that I'm a big fan of is the project funeral or the
00:38:28.840
post-mortem, which is all about this idea that when a project doesn't work out, so let's say,
00:38:33.760
you know, in one example, they developed a kind of glass, a window glass where the light wouldn't
00:38:40.140
reflect. And it was a beautiful technology, but they didn't realize that people wouldn't pay a
00:38:44.960
lot of money for that product. Like when that doesn't work out, the idea is to say, okay,
00:38:50.240
present it in front of other project managers from other divisions and say what you learned from it.
00:38:55.020
Like it's not about celebrating failure, it's about celebrating the learning from what didn't work.
00:38:58.740
And so in this example, you know, they would lay it to rest. They would say, okay, we learned next
00:39:03.100
time. We'll try to understand the market better. And, you know, then someone in the audience goes
00:39:07.540
like, hey, have you considered what this would mean for solar? Have you considered if you would put
00:39:13.280
that technology into a solar device, like how amazing that could absorb energy and like really
00:39:18.140
be effective. And so that's how part of the solar division emerged serendipitously, unexpectedly,
00:39:23.260
but in a way they created a process, a practice that made it possible for people to connect those
00:39:28.700
kind of dots because they were incentivized to show us the dots, right? Usually when something
00:39:33.180
doesn't work out, we try to hide it away. We try to not talk about it, but by incentivizing people
00:39:37.920
to talk about it, that's when other people can help connect the dots. And so it's really those
00:39:42.240
kinds of practices, but also simple things like in meetings, you know, I mentioned earlier, like how
00:39:47.680
instead of just asking, I don't know, you know, how were our numbers last week or X, Y, Z, like we can
00:39:52.760
also ask things like, you know, was there anything last week that really surprised you that
00:39:56.760
you didn't expect? And what happens a lot of times then is that people start opening their eyes
00:40:01.600
to those things that are not expected. And by doing this, they might find new things.
00:40:06.300
So for example, one of my absolute favorites is the potato washing machine. And you know,
00:40:13.400
the potato washing machine was all about a company in China, they produce washing machines,
00:40:18.980
refrigerators, and they got calls from farmers who said, your crappy machine is always breaking down.
00:40:24.340
And so they asked, why is it breaking down? Well, we're trying to wash our potatoes and
00:40:29.380
it just doesn't work. And so what would we usually say? We would say, well, don't wash your potatoes
00:40:33.540
in a potato washing machine. It's not made for this. And they did the opposite. They said,
00:40:38.920
that's unexpected, but let's build in a dirt filter and make it a potato washing machine,
00:40:43.360
which then became one of their products. The point here is that they incentivize the culture where
00:40:48.220
if something new comes in, like an unexpected customer reaction, for example, then they have an investment
00:40:53.160
committee internally that says, oh, we can bet on this idea. We can bet on this idea. And that comes
00:40:58.000
really back to your question earlier. Also, what we can do as individuals in terms of thinking about
00:41:02.180
portfolios, companies can do the same where like if low probability things pop up, having a filter
00:41:07.280
process that allows us to bet on those things and invest into those unexpected things that come up.
00:41:12.240
Well, yeah, I know like Google has that where it's like, they have those projects, people,
00:41:16.160
they expect or not expect, they encourage their employees like to spend 20% of their time just
00:41:20.620
exploring stuff that interests them. Exactly. And that's in a way, really also around this,
00:41:25.620
how do you as a company frame the idea that everyone should ideally be incentivized, right?
00:41:30.240
To look out for new things. I mean, in the past, we could see a great, we have a chief innovation
00:41:34.180
officer or like a research and development department. But in a world that's so fast changing,
00:41:39.020
like everyone needs to be, you know, like constantly kind of thinking about how can we do things
00:41:43.440
differently. And I think especially at the moment, right? I mean, COVID has been so fascinating
00:41:47.500
because you see how breweries, for example, realize that they can't sell the alcohol to
00:41:52.860
restaurants who close down. So they kind of said, Oh, wow, like maybe we can use that alcohol to
00:41:58.080
produce hand sanitizer. And so you see like breweries turning into hand sanitizer companies
00:42:02.160
and those things. And that's not an R&D department that like works on something for half a year.
00:42:06.500
It's like the random person in a meeting saying, Hey, have we thought about if we can like produce
00:42:11.180
hand sanitizer? So it's really this idea that everyone ideally needs that kind of mindset because
00:42:15.320
in a fast changing world, it has to come from everywhere. It can't just be a couple of people.
00:42:19.700
Well, Christian, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn
00:42:23.440
So there's a homepage, which is the serendipitymindset.com. And I'm on Twitter,
00:42:28.420
Chris Serendip. And yeah, I think that's the two major sources probably.
00:42:32.140
Fantastic. Well, Christian Bush, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:42:35.740
My guest today was Christian Bush. He's the author of the book,
00:42:37.880
The Serendipity Mindset. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:42:41.100
You can find out more information about the book at the website,
00:42:43.480
theserendipitymindset.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is
00:42:47.280
slash serendipity. You can find links to resources where we delve deeper into this topic.
00:42:58.040
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:43:01.680
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00:43:05.560
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