#662： The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck
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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
00:19:46.380
possibilities. Like don't just be so narrowly focused. Speaking of like, you're describing
00:19:51.380
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
0.94
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,
0.99
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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Until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you not to listen to the AOM podcast,