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Which is the usual big problem - overconfidence in the absence of data.
Prime example: if you go to any article about "OKR methodology" you will find the authors stating that it was OKRs that made Google what it is. If your manager sees such an article, you will be switching to OKRs instantly.
Also most companies I have seen and worked with are doing OKR as a to-do list for the management to check what people are doing.
Absolutely, I've had friends with limited business or tech background pump hard-earned savings into crazy tech startup ideas, precisely because they've read too many of these success stories. I've been guilty of not trying to talk sense to some of them, so much so that there's one particular marriage break-up related to a stupid tech start up blowing a couples life savings that still haunts me. And for the record, he…
And with great execution even the most crazy idea can become a success - there are tons of examples.
Ideas have nothing to do with failures, marriage breakups etc. That's bad planning, no backup plan, etc.
From my personal experience I would say we have this bias not only when it comes to success stories. One person has done something good or bad. Then all people who are in that specific group must be like this. Think of Politicians. One does something bad they are all bad. One bicycle driver is riding like crazy so lets ban all of them. I had some bad Asian food so Asian food in general must be bad. Country X had a sh…
Maybe we need this kind of optimistic bias in order to get anything new done. The road to every improvement is littered with failures, whose trying and failing was nevertheless necessary to the overall success.
This is exactly right. This kind of optimism is (usually) individually irrational, but extremely beneficial for the collective. Every time the world moves forward it's because some over-confident idiot bets everything on a hare brained idea. It's almost always ruinous, but on a societal level, the successes more than make up for all the failures.
Sure many individuals will fail, but if you planned everything - you will recover. And the benefits for the collective/country are just so big.
But the worst part about success stories is all the LinkedIn cringe, inspirational quotes, smug advice and airport business books they generate.
My experience so far.
I am really glad that I learned how stability is necessary in life.
I have been led into this "work and be successful" bias my reading PG's essay, story about motivated dropouts, Outlier's etc. I thought putting hours was enough to be successful! But nah, nothing is possible without some play of luck. Luck feels like multiplier.
Therefore, now that old perspective has changed, I am able to see completely new perspective. Instead of startup I look for long term careers. Instead of chasing money, I chase my own curiosity with optimism. I accepted that I amount to nobody!!
The beauty of this approach is I can let go of "I must do something important" mentality and explore anything which may sound super dumb and useless to society. For example, the other day I was looking into Gameboy architecture, one day GDB. That day I learnt you can record and replay programs in GDB! They don't teach this at college.
The hindsight is I get to enjoy the life! To me enjoying my life is being successful ;)
2. We don't know what has made a company succeed, so success stories only show cherry picked reasons of the overall
3. Success stories are biased towards making people look good and less socially acceptable things (like, the founder lied to the customers) are hidden
Living in the US of America is already a success compared with most other places in the world.
Success for most people is not making a billion dollar company. Success for them is being able to raise a family, work on their own, pursue their interests and be free. In the US you can do that way easier than in the rest of the world.
Billionaires are not happier than other people. Sleeping on your job like Musk and working all the time will not make you happier. And most people will not do that if they have the opportunity, they will prefer doing things like spending more time with their family even if that means they don't get to be billionaires.
I have seen men living isolated in Winter in Alaska and they were happy, because that is what they wanted to do.
Obviously is you raise your bar so high (billion dollars) almost nobody will do it. But in the US you can actually make millions and have a freedom the rest of the world envies, if that is what you want, or maybe you want to surf all day long.
Probably if you want to surf all day long and make a billion company it is way harder, but even that is possible in the USA, like the GoPro founder proves(he also bankrupted the company extracting so much for himself).
In other countries the educative system selects early on(ten years old) who is going to be engineer or doctor, don't let you have kids (or now they want to force you to have them), have way less economic opportunities and horrible salaries, there are no self employed people, or tax you to death.
Also the optimism the USA HAS is an enormous economic advantage over Asia, Europe and Africa.
North Americans exterminated the native population living there very recently, almost in 20th century, and as a result have an enormous country with bast resources for a population that is small and young compared with Europe or Asia.
Also they attract the brightest talent from the rest of the world, that does not like to be confiscatory taxed or censored or prosecuted.
In most Europe and specially Asia most people is so old that Pessimism is part of the culture, it is an illness. Africa is young but pure chaos and extremely corrupt few places there have the peace you need to prosper working.
In Japan for example, if you have an idea on your own almost everybody will try to sabotage it. Your friends and your family, for your own good.