URSABLOG: As Luck Would Have It

Many years ago I was invited to a presentation by the Japanese Embassy here in Athens, where two speakers, one from Toyota and the other from Nintendo, described their company philosophies and strategies. I was less interested in the strategy part – wisely as it turns out, because car manufacturing and making games has little to do with the world of tramp shipping – but it was the philosophies that both expressed which have stayed with me. I took a great deal from the Toyota sales cycle, where the closure of a sale is not the only important element of a deal, but part of a process which – if handled correctly – can lead to repeat business and growth. But it was the presentation from Nintendo that really made me think, and still does.

Nintendo is – despite its huge popularity in computer games – a very old company (est 1889) that specialised in producing handmade hanafuda playing cards. Although they started moving into basic electronic arcade games in the 1970s, it was only when they hired Shigeru Miyamoto that things changed and grew into the world beating company it is today. 

Miyamoto came from a small town near Kyoto, the son of an English teacher. He graduated from Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial arts with a degree in industrial design, but loved manga, and his initial ambition was to become a professional manga artist. However, inspired by his love for a new game called Space Invaders, he started to consider a career in video games. His father – through a mutual friend – arranged an interview with the Nintendo president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, and after showing some of his toy creations, Miyamoto was hired as an apprentice in the planning department. 

His first breakthrough was after Nintendo had developed a game called Radar Scope and despite modest success in Japan the big push to break into the American market ended in failure. Nintendo was left with a large number of unsold and otherwise useless machines (those of a similar generation will remember that huge size), and was on the verge of financial collapse. Yamauchi decided to convert unsold Radar Scope units into a new arcade game, and it fell to Miyamoto to develop it because no one else was available (or wanted) to do the work. The game he developed was Donkey Kong, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

The executive giving the presentation said that for a time, the company’s success was dismissed as chance. And indeed it seems so: an unknown apprentice with no real background did a job no one else wanted to do – especially on the back of a previous failure – and it was chance that he was around and then able to produce something that was completely new, fresh and groundbreaking. However, the successes they have since achieved – Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda not to mention Wii and one billion games created by Miyamoto sold worldwide – suggests something else. Miyamoto has been – justly – described as the Spielberg of the video world, and is hugely influential still. But it was not Miyamoto alone that developed and sold these games. This could not have happened without the history, culture, risk appetite, creativity, corporate structure and indeed the previous failures of Nintendo. Nintendo was lucky.

The executive suggested that luck was the product of opportunity and preparation.

LUCK = OPPORTUNITY x PREPARATION

There has to be something ready to work on an opportunity when it arises, and an opportunity cannot appear out of thin air. 

I remember – also years ago – that as a big deal I pulled off came to conclusion, being described – dismissed in fact – by one of my senior colleagues as being lucky. Perhaps I was, but what actually happened was that I was on the desk when a call came in, and despite – or in fact probably because – no one else wanted to take it, it was me that drafted the joint exclusive agreement with a major international broker, travelled down to Istanbul to secure it, and sent the invoice for our share of the commission to them when the ships – it was an en bloc deal for four of them –  delivered. It was not an insubstantial amount of commission either. 

But – and this is the lesson here I think – before my head explodes with pride, the call would not have been made unless we already had a reputation for handling big deals successfully, and there was an established expertise within the company. And I would not have taken the call if my other colleagues hadn’t been busy with other stuff deemed of more potential at the time. And the junior broker – who I trained – that passed the call to me is now – by the way – the co-head of a large London based international shipbroking company. How he came to rise to that position is a story of preparation and opportunity that can be told another time, over drinks perhaps. 

My point is that luck itself is different from chance, and that idea  goes back to one the greatest philosophers of all time: Aristotle. (Greek readers with forgive me I hope for using the Anglified version of Ἀριστοτέλης in writing, knowing that I will always use the Greek version when speaking.)

It can be said that luck is a type of chance. However, not all chance is a type of luck as ‘chance’ is the general term for coincidental causes. Luck is a very specific type of chance, because luck requires conscious decisions, an intent that is only possible with the intellect of an adult human being. In order for an event to be lucky, a person must attempt to accomplish some task. If in their pursuit of this task, they succeed by means of a coincidental cause, then the event is lucky. Chance, on the other hand, is merely an occurrence that came to be out of the chaos of events. It has no purpose or end. Simply put, it just happened.

Aristotle, in Physics II gave the example of a man attempting to collect a debt. He seeks a debtor and wanders into the market in search of the man. As chance, or luck, would have it, he comes across the debtor in the market and collects the payment owed to him. However, if this man went into the market for some other reason, perhaps to purchase food or listen to Socrates lecture, and then coincidentally comes upon the debtor, this was chance. Luck therefore contains the element of human intent, of a willing decision to do something. Simple chance, without intent, cannot be said to be lucky.

Aristotle further strengthened his argument by saying that having good luck is similar to being happy. Since being happy is an action of sorts, we see that being lucky must in some way relate to human action and decision.

“For luck and its results are found in things that are capable of being fortunate and in general capable of action, and that is why luck must concern what is achievable by action.”

Hence the saying that we make our own luck. And indeed Miyamoto himself recognised this:

“I feel that I have been very lucky to be a game designer since the dawn of the industry. I am not an engineer, but I have had the opportunities to learn the principles of game [design] from scratch, over a long period of time.”

Miyamoto joined Nintendo after an interview was arranged via a mutual friend of Miyamoto’s father. The President of Nintendo gave him a chance, but Miyamoto was still around when Radar Scope failed and President Yamauchi took a chance to used the surplus sets to create a new game. The preparation had been made – not consciously, not even rationally perhaps – but when the opportunity arose the pieces were nevertheless in place for better, newer, indeed unimaginable things to happen. And although this was lucky perhaps, it was only lucky because the intent was there to make something happen in the first place. It did not happen just by chance. 

For me, as a shipbroker, this can mean a number of things. We cannot wait for things to happen by chance, we have to intend to do things, and then do them. I cannot just stand under a tree and wait for the fruit to fall into my hands by chance; I have to shake the tree, even climb up it to release the ripe fruit. It may not be a particularly productive tree, but if I am lucky I will find one that bears enough fruit to profit me. Likewise, I can stand on the corner of a crossroads with the intention of selling the fruit to passers-by or fall asleep under the tree hoping by chance someone will pass by and wake me up to buy the fruit from me. If I am lucky I can sell all the fruit to those that otherwise wouldn’t have bought it, but only chance will lead to a sale if I am asleep under the tree. And if I am really lucky I will have repeat customers that want more fruit from me, so I can then repeat the process. It will not take a huge leap in imagination to make the connection with ship sale and purchase.

But more than that, I could use all the other tools at my disposal – my history, training, knowledge, expertise, connections – to improve my luck. I can also use the benefits of my company provides – its own history, connections, expertise – to improve our luck. We can also create new positions, new areas of expertise, encourage our teams, think about new opportunities to develop, and then develop them to broaden our range, and with it our luck. And personally I can invest in myself, push myself out of my comfort zone (again) and try new things, learn from mistakes, listen, question and engage. 

This is strangely comforting in an increasingly uncertain and dangerous world, where things seem to be spinning out of control, and indeed a sense of helplessness pervades our daily lives. What Aristotle – and indeed Nintendo – can still teach us is that action and intent is not only desirable but necessary if we are to achieve anything in life. It may lead to failure, but, if we persevere, we may just happen to get lucky.

Simon Ward