Is Luck Random — or Can You Cultivate It? | Christian Busch | TED

0:04 On January 7, 2025, our house,

0:07 my wife's parents' house and most of our neighborhood burned down to the ground.

0:12 On that day, I was about to submit a paper to a major management conference,

0:16 and like a rookie, I had left it

0:18 to the last hour and was stuck in the uploading queue.

0:21 That's when the evacuation order came in for the LA

0:24 wildfires in Pacific Palisades, where we lived.

0:27 I found myself outside hosing down the house

0:30 with one hand and holding the laptop with the other,

0:33 desperately trying to get that document to upload.

0:36 At that point, I thought that was my biggest problem.

0:39 Turns out it wasn't.

0:40 The document did upload.

0:42 The hosing, however, did not work, and 24 hours later, our house was gone.

0:47 I'll never forget the firefighting planes

0:49 flying so low overhead as we evacuated.

0:52 It felt like a really bad Hollywood movie.

0:55 My wife was pumping breast milk as we were trying

0:57 to get our newborn to safety and our toddler from preschool.

1:01 That night in the hotel,

1:02 as we tried to act as normal as possible towards the kids,

1:05 my then-three-year-old daughter looked up and said,

1:08 "I want to go home." You know, I've researched,

1:11 taught and worked on the unexpected for over a decade,

1:15 and I've seen a fair share of unexpected events myself.

1:18 But this hit on a whole new level.

1:20 In the days that followed, I tried to focus on the things that I could control.

1:24 And surprisingly, there were micro-moments of joy,

1:27 like unexpectedly bumping into old friends in the hotel that we evacuated to.

1:32 And that experience was an unexpected and certainly

1:35 not wished-for opportunity to practice the very serendipity mindset

1:39 framework that I had been working on, and that can

1:41 help us navigate those kinds of situations.

1:44 More on that later.

1:45 But first, let's talk about bad luck.

1:47 It all felt like really bad luck.

1:50 But when I reflected on it, I realized it was more than that.

1:54 It was zemblanity.

1:56 Zemblanity is when something unlucky,

1:58 unwanted or undesired happens by design because it's already built in.

2:04 It seems unexpected and like bad luck,

2:07 but in hindsight it was to be expected and avoidable.

2:10 In our case, the wildfires and the winds were the trigger,

2:15 but the real misfortune was already built into the fragile system all around us.

2:19 There was a lack of water in the water reservoirs and hydrants,

2:23 a limited pre-deployment of fire trucks in the area despite the early warnings.

2:28 Brush wasn’t cleared in the area, and a complete lack of coordination.

2:32 It wasn't just one thing.

2:33 In retrospect, we realized that it was a space

2:37 of infinite negative possibilities where eventually misfortune was inevitable.

2:43 The thing is, even when you try to do the right thing, in the system around you,

2:47 zemblanity can still be baked in and you get caught up in it.

2:51 What happened to us wasn't just bad luck.

2:54 It was a pattern that I've seen everywhere,

2:56 from wildfires to boardrooms to living rooms.

2:59 The thing about zemblanity is it’s not just out there in big systems,

3:02 like in the wildfire case.

3:03 We see the same in companies with toxic corporate cultures,

3:07 where it's just a matter of time that disaster strikes.

3:09 And sometimes even in our own minds.

3:12 Zemblanity is when we create our own bad luck.

3:16 Take the traveler who leaves for the airport with exactly

3:19 the time it's needed to get to the airport.

3:22 Any small unexpected thing, like a minor traffic jam,

3:25 and suddenly, the flight is missed.

3:28 Or take the old man who is told to use his walking stick.

3:31 He doesn't.

3:32 One day he "unexpectedly" falls down the stairs.

3:35 It might seem surprising in the moment, but it was to be expected.

3:39 Zemblanity seems like bad luck, but it's already built in all along.

3:45 Now before I go deeper into this, I want to ask you a question.

3:50 In the room, who of you considers yourself to be a lucky person,

3:53 please raise your hands.

3:54 And at home, a mental hand-raise works too.

3:57 OK, quite the lucky room, actually, well done.

3:59 No worries, I won't ask the unlucky ones.

4:01 We'll focus on the lucky ones for now.

4:05 Those of you now who said you consider yourself to be a lucky person,

4:09 who of you thinks they had some sort of role in it?

4:11 Please put all modesty aside.

4:13 Who thinks, hands up, had some sort of role in it?

4:15 OK, still quite a few.

4:16 Alright, so that's interesting, right, that on one hand,

4:19 we know that luck is random, but on the other hand,

4:22 already Louis Pasteur told us that it may favor the prepared mind.

4:26 In order to visualize this, let’s look at the Luck Matrix.

4:30 The Luck Matrix shows us the four different types of luck.

4:33 Here, on the lower left, we see bad luck.

4:36 Bad luck is something negative, unexpected, that happens to us.

4:40 It happens to us, you can never blame anyone

4:42 for bad luck and it creates a lot of societal inequality.

4:46 Good luck, here on the lower right, is something positive.

4:49 It happens to us, we didn't work for it.

4:51 Just great if it happens.

4:53 Zemblanity is the misfortune by design that we built into fragile systems

4:59 or into the pattern and habits that kind of then ultimately lead us to disaster.

5:04 And then the thing that has driven

5:06 our research for the last decade is serendipity.

5:09 Serendipity is the active luck that depends

5:12 on how we engage with the unexpected.

5:14 Blind luck happens to us, and active luck, serendipity, can be cultivated.

5:20 Imagine you have erratic hand movements like I do.

5:23 Then you spill a lot of coffee, right?

5:25 So imagine you accidentally spill coffee over the person next to you.

5:29 That person looks at you slightly annoyed,

5:31 but you sense there might be something there.

5:33 You don't know what, you just think, oh, that could be an interesting person.

5:37 And now you have a couple of options, right?

5:39 One is to just say, "I'm so sorry." You walk outside and you think, "Ah,

5:42 what could have happened?" Another option is

5:44 you start that conversation and that person

5:46 becomes the love of your life or your cofounder or you name it.

5:50 The point is, the eventual outcome, good or bad,

5:53 depends on how we engage with the unexpected.

5:56 And that's where serendipity emerges.

5:58 Serendipity really is this unexpected good luck that results

6:01 from unplanned moments in which our actions lead to positive outcomes.

6:06 Let's look at an example.

6:07 In 1968, Spencer Silver was trying to develop a stronger glue.

6:13 Accidentally, he developed a weaker one.

6:16 Seemed useless in the moment, until a couple of years later,

6:19 his colleague Arthur Fry was using that weak glue

6:23 to avoid having his bookmarks falling out of his church hymnal.

6:27 That seemed quite useful.

6:29 The Post-it note was born and became one of 3M's major products.

6:34 Lots of examples out there of serendipity, right?

6:36 From Velcro to microwave ovens to how

6:40 people unexpectedly find love or their apartments.

6:42 And a lot of times also when crises become

6:45 the inflection point for something in one's own life.

6:48 The point is that over the last decade we've studied serendipity,

6:52 all these different stories of serendipity,

6:54 and tried to understand, is there a pattern behind that.

6:57 And it turns out there is.

6:58 It's always the same process.

7:01 There is an unexpected serendipity trigger, which is random, right?

7:04 So the coffee spill or the weak glue.

7:08 But then we have to imbue meaning in it.

7:10 We have to connect the dots, we have to see what could be in that moment,

7:13 and then we have to materialize it, right?

7:15 It's not enough to just think,

7:17 "This could be the love of my life." You've got to actually go on dates, right?

7:20 And so the point is, once we look at it as a process, we can influence it.

7:24 We can first learn how to see more serendipity triggers to try

7:29 to focus on what is the information hidden in this good- or bad-luck moment.

7:34 You know, for example, asking in weekly meetings, what surprised you last week?

7:38 Very simple question,

7:39 but then people start to focus on, is there some information

7:42 in this, kind of, unexpected event that has just been happening here?

7:46 Second, we can learn how to "seed" more serendipity triggers.

7:50 And I'm not suggesting you spill more coffee.

7:52 There [are] other ways, one of which is, at an event like this today,

7:56 to put some rich information points out there, right?

7:59 When someone asks the dreaded “So what do you do?” question,

8:02 saying something like, "Hey, I'm Christian Busch, I study serendipity,

8:05 but what I'm really curious about is parenting,

8:07 because our four-year-old just learned how

8:09 to negotiate.” And so what I'm doing here

8:11 is I'm giving you a couple of potential

8:13 connection points where you could be like,

8:15 "Oh my God, such a coincidence, our kid also— X, Y, Z." The point is,

8:19 instead of having a pitch that's unidimensional,

8:21 it's giving multidimensionality and potential dots

8:23 that other people can connect for us.

8:26 Then third, we can learn how to better connect the dots.

8:29 For example, asking ourselves in unexpected moments,

8:32 "Can I still find some meaning in this?" And then last but not least,

8:36 we can also learn how to act more

8:38 on it because that's where we miss serendipity very often.

8:41 Think back in your life to moments where

8:43 you saw an unexpected opportunity in the moment,

8:46 but you didn't act on it, right?

8:47 So maybe it was the unexpected idea

8:50 in a meeting that you didn't bring into the meeting.

8:53 Or you were flirting with a person

8:55 on the bus when you were still single, of course,

8:58 but you were flirting with that person on the bus,

9:00 and you didn't speak with them.

9:02 And then you walked outside and think, "Ah,

9:04 what could have happened had I?" And there's a lot

9:06 of reasons that hold us back in those moments, right?

9:09 But one of the major reasons is fear of rejection, right?

9:12 So in my case, for example, my brain immediately goes to what's the worst

9:16 thing that can happen if I do this?

9:18 The sting of rejection.

9:20 One thing I've realized, though, and our research shows, is that actually,

9:24 once you start to realize that that is not the real worst case,

9:29 that the real worst case is the regret of not having tried.

9:34 That feeling of walking outside and thinking, "Ah,

9:37 what could have happened?" And so what can be

9:39 really useful is this idea of reframing away from “What’s

9:42 the risk of doing this?” to "What's actually

9:44 the risk of not doing it?" And then we realize,

9:47 the risk of not doing it is a lot

9:49 of times much higher than the risk of doing it.

9:51 So it gives us a bias for action.

9:53 Now why is this serendipity mindset,

9:55 this capacity to turn the unexpected into positive outcomes so important?

10:01 Well because the unexpected is everywhere, whether we see it or not,

10:05 and whether we like it or not, right?

10:07 The likelihood of one specific unexpected event happening is very low, right?

10:13 It’s very unlikely that the lady here yells at me

10:17 or the gentleman here throws a peach at me, right?

10:20 That's very— I hope that's unlikely.

10:21 I mean, you never know, but it's very unlikely in itself.

10:26 But when you add up all the possible

10:28 unexpected things that could happen, all these infinite,

10:31 unexpected things that could happen out there,

10:33 it actually becomes quite likely that something unexpected happens.

10:37 And that's quite scary to me as a German, right?

10:40 We love planning, we love having a strategy and straight lines.

10:43 And then life is a little bit more like a squiggle, right?

10:46 Where unexpected events come from everywhere.

10:48 And so we have to build a muscle for that.

10:50 And that is true for good luck, but it's also true for bad luck, right?

10:54 The same alertness to our surroundings,

10:57 the ability to connect our dots that helps us nurture serendipity,

11:01 can also help us guard against the impacts of zemblanity.

11:04 And you know, of course, mindset is not a cure-all, right?

11:07 Our research also shows that things like education, networks,

11:11 safety nets play a huge role when it comes to opportunity spaces.

11:15 But on the individual level, for what is at our disposal,

11:18 mindset is one of the most effective tools

11:20 we have to nurture serendipity and guard against zemblanity.

11:24 It's not toxic positivity.

11:26 It's not ignoring pain, it's not ignoring grief.

11:29 It’s accepting it, it’s working with it,

11:31 and then saying, "What can I still control now?

11:33 What can I still focus on now?" And, you know, in our case,

11:38 there was a lot of pain around losing our house, right?

11:41 And that doesn't really go away that quickly.

11:43 I still wake up in the morning and think, how can that happen.

11:46 But alongside it, something unexpected happened.

11:49 It sparked new research.

11:51 It gave me a renewed sense of purpose, and it rallied the community around us.

11:55 I am far closer now with my in-laws, with whom we spend much more time.

11:58 And so out of the ashes, something new is beginning to grow.

12:03 Viktor Frankl, who has been a great inspiration to me,

12:06 once said that "everything can be taken from a [hu]man but one thing:

12:10 the last of the human freedoms— to choose

12:13 one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,

12:15 to choose one's own way." And I believe that's very true.

12:20 We can't pick the fires, the storms, the crises,

12:23 but we can choose how we meet them.

12:25 And that choice is where serendipity begins as the unexpected starting

12:29 point for a new chapter and potentially a whole new book.

12:33 My hope is that we start building a world

12:37 that is designing more for serendipity and guards against zemblanity.

12:41 And the next time something unexpected happens to you,

12:44 may serendipity be with you.

12:46 Thank you.

12:47 (Applause)