Mind Blogging. Mind Boggling.

Imagine regular Rahul with a regular Role-  9-5 job at a technology company, comes back home to play tennis ball cricket with his 2 kids and friends, enjoying the game and being part of a cheerful crowd in his apartment complex. He is environmentally conscious, careful with water and plastic, and using public transport as much as possible. During the weekend, he participates in 2-3 hour discussions with Rotary club on sundry, small improvement projects - how to how to make the immediate colony greener (barely 1 square kilometer), and some charitable causes nearby. He also visits nearby parks with his wife and kids, where he goes for long walks and occasional boating on the lake. At the tech company, Rahul is part of an important project to make a software to enable Virtual 3D Holograms (like in Star Wars) - to make global virtual meetings more effective. Now make a country of 1 million Rahuls, and don't you have a happy and prosperous country? 

Will there be a book written about Rahul? Never. He's no CEO, he's just a middling mid-level manager. Where is the drama? Regular, predictable life, nothing seemingly remarkable. No autobiography or movie about him, with a bombastic title - "Story of a Stud" (made that up), "Losing my virginity" (real), "Mah lyf mah rulez" (made that up). However, he's happy, and he's part of a decent bunch of people at work, and 1 Mn versions of him are working cohesively are taking the country towards sustainable prosperity.

My point is to warn against idolising 'heroes' before deep scrutiny. Today, I think there is a massive rise in non-fiction 'hero-worship' content. This is probably due to excellent data recording over the past 30-40 years such as digital storage and the powerful media. Globalization, and reach of the media via streaming and social, is magnifying the power of spreading these stories. Further, there is increasing scrutiny of factors behind world class performance, with books like Outliers offering a formula based on some individual successes.  Note that I myself have consumed a lot of hero-worship content, and therefore, all my points below are not just sermonizing to the read but to myself, too.

There are three main issues I see that should lead one to be careful when worshipping heroes that modern media and society throw up. One, is Survivorship bias. Second, is the story that is told and the story that is not told.  Last, is happiness quotient of their own selves.

Survivorship bias- classic fallacy- the very mix of traits that supposedly explained the success of this guy, could have led 99 people to failure, but we will not hear of those stories- we will hear only of this 1 guy. Therefore, adopting his traits would lead us towards a 99% chance of 'failure', however we define it. There's the standard finance test; in which there's 1000 people who randomly predict that the market in the year will go Up or Down. After 10 years, there will be 1 guy out of 1024 who predicted the market exactly (Up, Down, Up, Up, Up, Up, Down, Down, Down, Up) and Wall Street Investor will run a cover story on this guy and talk about various habits of his such as drinking Ragi Malt at 11 PM contributed to his stunning success. And completely ignore the 1023 others. All media, be it print or streaming, is built on stories; and humans love stories; and therefore temptation must be great to build a cover story on  this 1-guy who got the call right for 10 consecutive years- what are his habits, beliefs, philosophies, and favorite coffee flavor.

Next is that there's the untold story behind the told story- success was only possible because of underhand or unsaid means not mentioned in the book or movie. I call this the Autobiography fallacy, because one might tend to avoid murky secrets or perhaps even suspected elements of luck in telling their story to the wider world, in order to not destroy one's own legacy. Elizabeth Holmes, after the success of Theranos which did blood tests on just a pin prick of blood, was the darling of media and was hailed as hero for women the world over. Netflix would have been close to releasing a mini series on her success and her methods the world over. I am sure girls in Silicon Valley copied her deep voice, her dressing, and her hairstyle, her ways. However, 3 years later, her world collapsed and her company and she was indicted of massive fraud (book review of Bad blood on this blog is here ) . Now Netflix would have quickly done an about-turn and released the series about the shocking fraud. Movie's under process - Bad Blood IMDB link is here .  Further, as pointed out in Outliers, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had immense lucky breaks - getting unprecedented access to a university computer at a young age- that gave them a huge early leap over others. No one knew about this, and for all their amazing traits mentioned in movies and biographies and copied by many, this lucky break might have been the most important reason. Their success therefore might have been despite these traits, due to their lucky early break, and not because of these traits. Further, there are numerous famous dubious stands which Steve Jobs has taken, which his biographer has not mentioned. One of which is- when he stole Mac's OS from Xerox, he said in 1996 "we have been shameless about stealing great ideas" (sic); but after Google launches Android, he said he would do Thermonuclear war on Android copying iOS (2 minute link here ). Also linked to this point is the fact that the company that these 'heroes' build, such as Nike or Apple, survive during the date of publishing of autobiography and said heroes hold a lot of stock of the company in their wealth. Therefore, there is no way that Phil Knight or Steve Jobs will reveal anything that will materially lower the company's share price.

Lastly, there's Van Gogh- VVG is obviously an immense professional success- his works have held the world in their thrall for 200+ years. I myself have dazzled by his works in the Van Gogh museum, a book on him and his paintings adorns my coffee table, and there's a review of Starry Night in this very blog right here  ) There's also an analysis in the book Range about how the fact that he was unsuccessful in various vocations and those repeated quick failures 'trial and error' approach led him to hit upon big success in painting.  However, the fact is, he was clinically depressed, realized that his paintings were a big hit only for the last 2 odd years, shot himself to kill, died a painful and lonely death, at the age of 35 odd. There's no posthumous joy from all the global adulation he is receiving till date. Will you be ok with this deal?  Another fairly famous from the annals of biographies is Agassi's bio 'Open' - on how he absolutely hated Tennis and was very insecure for a very long time.

In conclusion, I am not saying- do not learn from heroes or do not annoint heroes. I will continue to read biographies and inspiring stories. How does one guard against this? Some thoughts follow, and they apply to me as much as to you. Firstly, better to wait for a bit before quickly anointing someone as a hero, because the closely guarded dark secrets behind the success might come out soon. Secondly, define one's own framework for personal success based on our starting position and our priorities. Thirdly, filter out survivorship bias and search carefully if there's some critical detail missing in the story and only then pick up traits or stories. More the data around it all, the better. I am reminded about how I went back to IIM B recently for a run, and I was speaking to a Professor Saurav Mukherjee about senior alum returning to campus and giving talks. He was skeptical and said that in such cases, people only talk about 'war stories', which he wanted to avoid, and that he wanted more of cases, with their data and rigour. War stories would probably be highly susceptible to Survivorship bias and Autobiography fallacy.  Lastly, massive change and impact can be achieved by a group of 'normal' people with no superhuman powers, who work closely together in spirit of community and bonhomie. So instead of solely focusing on being a hero all by yourself like all the heroes in the book, one could perhaps also spend time on increasing co ordination and cohesion with community around. 

Edit on Oct 18 2020: Extract from "The Four" - a masterly read in the tech-firm-bashing genre, by wise and got-my-hands-dirty-not-just-a-phD prof, Scott Galloway: "There are few better examples of what Pope Francis refers to as in unhealthy "idolatry of money" than our obsession with Steve Jobs. It is conventional wisdom that Steve Jobs put a "dent in the universe". No, he didn't. Steve Jobs, in my view, spat on the universe. People who get up every morning, get their kids dressed, get them to school, and have an irrational passion for their kids' well-being, dent the universe. The world needs more homes with engaged parents, not a better f*ing phone" While this paragraph is somewhat reductive in itself, and I feel Apple has done more than create just a phone, I do see the point and it echoes the theme of the post.