生意场的运气论

    迈克•莫伯辛当时并没有想到，周日在大学看球赛竟会帮他在日后找到了一份投行的工作——但这就是所谓的运气。

    那时还是大四学生的莫伯辛去参加德崇（Drexel Burnham Lambert）高管在纽约举行的最后一轮面试。这时，高管桌子下面一个带有华盛顿红人队（Washington Redskins）标志的垃圾桶引起了他的注意。

    莫伯辛是一名美式足球球迷，因此，他在15分钟的面试时间里满口讲的都是对美式足球的激情，却对银行业务只字未提。他拿到了这个工作。（几个月之后，他了解到，这名高管为了录用他而置其他面试者的评论于不顾。）莫伯辛在他最近出版的《成功方程式》（The Success Equation）一书中写到：“我的职业生涯始于一个垃圾桶。”

    我们的生活的方方面面都体现了运气和能力的合力，从我们遇到的人，薪水的多少，一直到寿命的长短，概莫能外。但是理解每个元素的作用则是一件困难的事。

    莫伯辛在业界拥有超过25年的投资经验。他在书中讨论了运气和能力在体育、业务和投资领域相互碰撞的情况。兼任哥伦比亚商学院（Columbia Business School）教师的莫伯辛说：“我总能感觉到，光意识到运气的作用是不够的。下一步应该试着思考如何对它进行量化，最终搞清楚它对决策的影响。”

    为即将上任的首席执行官制定薪资标准，投资哪支共同基金，这些都是商业决策，而商业决策经常会通盘地忽视运气元素。但认为，之前的成功仅取决于个人能力，却忽视运气的作用，莫伯辛认为这种认识是危险的。

    如今，好运气似乎前所未有地重要。莫伯辛解释道，这一理论在于，由于全世界人民的能力都在提高，运气正日益成为区分结果的决定性因素。

    莫伯辛在自己的书里引用了一个棒球案例来说明这一理念——即能力悖论。案例的主角是棒球史上最有名的击球手之一泰德•威廉姆斯，他是最后一位在整个赛季中拥有平均.400打击率的球手（这是他在1941年取得的成绩）。莫伯辛写到，并不是如今球员的能力比威廉姆斯那个时代的球员的能力差，而是因为联盟的标准在提高。他说：“如今顶尖球员和普通球员之间的差距较一两代人之前的差距要小得多。因此这也就意味着，深藏不露的运气在决定胜负的过程中发挥着越来越大的作用。”

    莫伯辛说，公司也是一样，因为当今这个世界奉行的就是胜者为王的法则。同时在市场上销售同一产品的两家公司可能会拥有两种截然相反的业绩。他说：“模拟实验表明，如果你打算一遍又一遍地游玩天下，重播录影带，每一遍都会得到不同的答案。”这也是投资具有高风险的原因，尤其是投资年轻的、不成熟的创业公司。当所有的可控成功因素都具备了之后，一点点好运气就能让公司平步青云，而一点霉运则可以让公司走上创业的不归路。

    对于很多人来说，挑战在于接受这样一个事实，运气是完全不为人的意识所左右的。莫伯辛说，在这一方面，我们的大脑可能是我们最大的敌人，因为我们会本能地去尝试下结论，同时弄清楚生活中事情的来龙去脉。这些结论通常都没有考虑运气，特别是在事情发展顺利的时候。人们往往认为成功是个人杰出能力的体现；而另一方面，失败则往往归因于糟糕的运气。莫伯辛说：“我认为这是大环境的一种表象，在这里，‘嗨，如果我做的好，是因为我是一个好人。’如果我做的不好，那么‘天呐，如今的世道不怎么喜欢我。’”

    对于投资者来说，《成功方程式》可能看起来只是过家家的读物；毕竟，没人愿意接受这样的观点，即他们无法控制公司未来的财务状况。但是这本书也在某种意义上进行了思考，同时重申了这样一种观念：不管怎么样，我们所有人都在不同程度地受到各种难以理解的力量的制约。

    莫伯辛说：“关键在于关注可控的因素。有时候，运气会眷顾你，有时则不会。但是，只要你尽量让事情在你的有效控制范围之内，就没必要太担心。”

    Michael Mauboussin didn't realize that watching football on Sundays in college would one day land him his first job at an investment bank -- but that's the nature of luck.

    Mauboussin, then a college senior, walked in for his final interview with a top executive at Drexel Burnham Lambert in New York when a trash can featuring the Washington Redskins logo caught his eye from under the executive's desk.

    A football fan, Mauboussin spent his 15-minute interview discussing a shared passion that had nothing to do with banking. The job was his. (Months later, he learned that the executive overrode reviews given by other interviewers in order to get him the position.) "My career," writes Mauboussin in his recently published book, The Success Equation, "was launched by a trash can."

    A combination of luck and skill contributes to every aspect of our lives, from the people we meet, to how much we earn, to how long we have to live. But understanding the role that each element plays is the tricky part.

    Mauboussin, who has more than 25 years of investment experience under his belt, explores in his book where luck and skill collide in sports, business, and investing. "I'd felt that in every case, being aware of the role of luck was simply not enough," says Mauboussin, who also teaches at ColumbiaBusinessSchool. "The next step should be to try and think about how to quantify that and then, ultimately, what that should mean for making decisions."

    Business decisions, like how much to pay an incoming CEO or which mutual fund to invest in, often disregard the element of luck entirely. But assuming that prior success is merely associated to a person's skill -- and ignoring luck's role -- is dangerous, argues Mauboussin.

    Good fortune seems to be more critical today than ever. The theory, explains Mauboussin, is that as more of the world becomes more skilled, luck increasingly becomes the deciding element that separates one outcome from another.

    In his book, Mauboussin uses a baseball example to illustrate this idea -- known as the Paradox of Skill -- by focusing on Ted Williams, one of the game's greatest hitters, and the last player to eclipse a .400 batting average for an entire season (which he did in 1941). It's not that players today aren't as skilled as they were during Williams' time, writes Mauboussin. It's that the standards in the league have risen. "The difference between the very best guys and the average guys is much smaller today than it was a generation or two ago," he says. "So that means that luck, which has always been lurking in the background, is playing a larger role in determining outcomes."

    The same goes for companies, which are immersed in a social world that supports a winner-takes-all mentality, says Mauboussin. Two companies that bring identical products to market at the same time may experience vastly different outcomes. "The simulations show that if you were to play the world over and over, replay the tape, you would get different answers in different runs," he says. That's what makes investing such a risky business, especially investing in young, unproven startups. When all the controllable ingredients for success are lined up, all it takes is a little bit of luck to put one company on the path toward billions -- or a little bad luck to send another spiraling toward the startup graveyard.

    For many, the challenge is simply accepting that luck is completely outside of our control. Our brains may be our biggest enemies in coming to terms with this, as we naturally try to draw conclusions and determine causes for the things that happen in our lives, says Mauboussin. Those conclusions often exclude the role of fortune, especially when things go well. Success is often deemed a result of impressive skill; failure, on the other hand, is often chalked up to bad luck. "I think that's part of the whole system where, 'Hey, if I'm doing well it's because I'm a good guy,'" says Mauboussin. "If I'm not doing well, then 'Gee, the world doesn't like me today.'"

    To investors, The Success Equation may seem starting; after all, no one wants to accept that their financial future is outside of their control. But the book also liberates in a way, reinforcing the belief that no matter what, we are all, in one way or another, at the mercy of forces beyond our reach.

    "The key is to focus on what you can control," says Mauboussin. "Some days things will go for you and some days they won't, but as long as you are doing the things that are in your control as effectively as you can, you shouldn't worry so much."