Ali Jawad, Paralympian powerlifter and ideaXme guest interviewer talks with Dr Christian Busch ,PhD, Full-time Faculty and Director, CGA Global Economy Program at New York University and author of The Serendipity Mindset. They discuss the art and science of creating good luck, the subject of Christian’s new book, and what we all can do to create serendipity across every aspect of our lives.
The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck.
There are many great turning points and opportunities in our lives the impact and outcome of which is often within our control. Successful people and organisations are not simply luckier than the rest of us they have a way of leveraging situations – good and bad to optimise the likelihood of good luck. Learn how from Dr Christian Busch!
Ali Jawad: [00:00:00] Christian: What inspired you to write the book?
Dr Christian Busch a Catalyst to Change My Life
Dr Christian Busch: [00:00:28] I used to be an extremely rebellious teenager. I was kicked out of school. I channelled my energy in very questionable ways. And then I turned 18. I got my first car. My driving style then unsurprisingly mirrored my behaviour in life generally. I probably had the unofficial world record of the number of dustbins a person could drive over on their way to school. But one day everything changed. I had a car crash that almost killed me. I have never forgotten the policeman who came to the scene and said: “Oh, my God, he’s still alive!”. I knew then that that I was supposed to be dead. This had a major impact.
So, I asked myself questions: “If I had died, would it have been worth it? Had I done anything meaningful until then?”. I had to admit to myself, my life had not really had meaning until this point. This acted as a catalyst to begin my search for meaning.
A Journey in Search of Meaning
Dr Christian Busch: [00:01:24] So, I started reading a wonderful book by Viktor E Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning. It is about the idea that you can find meaning even in the direst of situations. This educated me and gave me insight. Furthermore, made me realise that what I enjoy the most in life is connecting people, connecting ideas.
Creating Opportunities and Connecting the Dots
I began my career as a community builder and went into entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship and then research. And what I found fascinating along that decade long journey is that the most successful purpose driven, joyful people around me, had something in common, which is that they somehow see something unexpected in situations, create opportunities and connect the dots. They are able to cultivate serendipity to cultivate that kind of unexpected good luck. And so, I am trying to spread that word – way of thinking and hopefully to help as many people as possible to have similar experiences.
Ali Jawad: [00:02:16] I can relate what you have said to my own experiences as a Paralympian athlete who battles crohns disease. I nearly died in 2010 from complications relating to crohns. And before then, even though I was a high-level athlete, I was a rebellious, angry teenager who wasn’t really performing their best. It took that near-death experience to make me realise that actually I need to start connecting the dots to harness my potential.
Ali Jawad: [00:02:42] In your book, The Serendipity Mindset, you talk about the importance of showing your real self in order to maximise the chances of serendipity in your encounters with others. (Authenticity and authentic communication being an important factor in optimising serendipity) So, who are you and what is real the you?
Authenticity is Key to Optimise Serendipity
Dr Christian Busch: [00:02:57] That’s a great question. I’m constantly revisiting that question. I feel like I’m a practical philosopher in the sense of always asking that question. And every couple of years I go through it. I experience a crisis. I try to redefine what I find most meaningful. This re-anchors me with the Victor Frankl idea of. I ask myself: “What is my North Star?” The answer is: ” It is spreading the excitement that we can turn the unexpected into positive outcomes, that I feel like that serendipity lifestyle has been something that is my meaning.
A lot of my work is in resource constrained environments. If you’re in Kenya and you work in a context where people have literally nothing you see how they make the best out of it. These kinds of people still feel they can create their own luck. That gets me really excited. So, that is who I am!
Building Resilience to Optimise Serendipity
Ali Jawad: [00:04:32] That has hit a nerve! All my life, I’ve thought about myself as a sportsperson. But then actually through different stages, I’ve kind of had to redefine what actually kind of makes me real as a person.
Ali Jawad: [00:04:53] Now I’ve got loads of aspects of my life that come together to create Ali Jawad the person, the human rather than just sport itself and everything is all about sport. There are other ways to find meaning.
Connecting the Dots for Serendipity
Ali Jawad: [00:05:12] So could you explain to the audience how we can all influence serendipity? How would you describe the processes that influence serendipity?
Dr Christian Busch: [00:05:24] If we take a couple of examples. One of the things we’ve been doing over the last two years is to try to understand how this happens. If you look at inventions, innovations, and our own lives. 50 percent of the crucial moments and things that happen are essentially serendipitous. This is fascinating. We tend to airbrush this out of our stories. We say I wanted to do this and then I did this and then that.
And so, take an example. Researchers were giving medication to people to treat angina and they realised there was some kind of movement and male participants’ trousers. Usually we might ignore that. We might say, oh, my God, that’s embarrassing. They did the opposite. They said, you know what, that’s unexpected. But a lot of men in the world have a similar problem in that department. So why don’t we build or develop a medication that treats that? And so that’s how Viagra came about.
Dr Christian Busch: [00:06:42] If you think about how maybe you met your life partner serendipitously in a coffee shop where if you have erratic moves like I do, you spill coffee all the time, you sense a kind of connection. Right. And then you have two options. Usually the one is when this unexpected moment happens, you do something proactively about it. You’re say: “Oh, my God, so sorry. I was just thinking about x” to start a conversation and maybe something happens, or the other option is just: “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry”. You walk outside and you look at what could have happened had I acted on this. And so, the point here is that what all these things have in common is there’s always some kind of trigger, right. Some kind of unexpected event that happens. And a lot of times we can’t really influence that. And we can talk later about that. We can also see triggers and we can see dots. But for now, let’s assume there is this unexpected moment and that is really all about our reaction. How do we connect the dots? How do we do something with it? How do we make this accident meaningful? That’s what serendipity is all about to say. There is a trigger. Then we have to connect the dots and have the tenacity to do something with it. And so, it’s with that process of spotting and connecting dots and which means then we can focus on seeing dots more and creating more dots, but also how we train ourselves to connect the dots differently.
Ali Jawad: [00:07:52] So does that mean you can kind of learn by practicing seeing the dots and being confident enough to connect them together.
The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck
Dr Christian Busch: [00:08:03] Exactly! There’s a lot of work, at every stage of the process, there’s a lot we can do. But to give you one example, that shows us how important is for example – how we frame the world. A colleague of mine did a couple of experiments with people where they took someone who self-identified as very lucky says good things always happen to me and someone who self identifies is very unlucky. So, someone who says bad things always happen to me. I’m always in accidents, all this kind of stuff. We all know these kinds of people on both sides. And so, he tells them, walk down the street, go into the coffee shop, order a coffee and sit down. What he doesn’t tell them is that there’s hidden cameras across the street and inside the coffee shop, that there’s a five pound note in front of the coffee shop and inside the coffee shop there’s a chair that’s empty is right next to the successful businessman who can make big dreams happen. Now, the lucky person walks down the street, sees the five-pound note, picks it up as excitement goes inside or as the coffee sits next to the businessman has a nice conversation. They exchanged business cards and potentially an opportunity coming out of it. We don’t know that part.
Dr Christian Busch: [00:09:08] The unlucky person walks down the street, steps over the five-pound note, doesn’t see the money goes inside orders the coffee sits next to the businessman ignores the businessman as that. At the end of the day, they ask both people. So how was your day to day? And so, the lucky person says: “It was amazing. I found money in the street. I made new friends and a potential opportunity will be coming out of it. We don’t have it now. I’m like a person just says, well, nothing really happened. And so, you know, we see that a lot in people where people can have exactly the same situation, face exactly the same problem, but some of them just seem a bit luckier than others. And so, what I’ve been very curious about is how do we train ourselves to exactly see the money when it is there to essentially also be able to make the best out of things. And that’s not only about introversion or extroversion. So, yes, if I talk to the businessmen, that probably makes it more likely that something emerges. But there’s also a lot of things introverts can do. And so, I’m really excited about this question: “How do we look at the world differently so that we create more of that luck, no matter where we are in life at the moment”.
Sports People and Serendipity
Ali Jawad: [00:10:08] Is it possible to relate this thinking to other sectors, or does this relate mostly to entrepreneurship? For example, are there sports people that have this quality? Or, do they have to learn it?
Dr Christian Busch: [00:10:26] Well, that’s interesting because I think there’s a lot to learn from sports people. If you think how serendipity happens a lot of times. For example, I’m in a wonderful relationship now. And that relationship essentially took 12 years. We serendipitously met via a mutual friend over dinner 12 years ago. We were super excited, but nothing happened. And then over 12 years, from time to time, we would see each other as friends. But nothing ever happened. And then only like a few months ago we reconnected. And over some kind of conversation, we realized: “Oh, my God, we have a lot in common. And oh, my God, we believe in the same things”. So finally, we connected the dots and finally we did something with it. That took tenacity and grit on both sides. I think one of the things I’ve learned, you’re a great case in point, grit and tenacity is important and serendipity has an incubation time (if you hang in there).
Ali Jawad: [00:11:49] I told you in our conversation offline that I have started a PhD in anti-doping in sport. It is a controversial topic. In your book you expressed that exceptional students read around their subject and you then related this to serendipity.
Ali Jawad: [00:12:20] Could you elaborate. How do you think I could be a better student an exceptional student?
Exceptional Students
Dr Christian Busch: [00:12:32] That’s really interesting. I collaborate with students who write their PhD theses. It is possible to identify the original students very quickly and those who will just do ok. A normal student says: “I know exactly what I want to do. I have it all mapped out. Here’s my literature. I just need your approval”. The exceptional student says:” Oh my God, I read this literature and that literature. I found this interesting, that interesting. But I have no real idea yet how to combine all of this and that ambiguity. This creates friction and tension and eventually creates real originality. It creates real contribution, because essentially, it’s all about connecting dots differently between all these different sources. And it has to start with ambiguity because it is the friction that really creates something special.
Dr Christian Busch: [00:13:37] If you think about the most creative endeavours, about how in companies’ innovation happens, it’s usually because there’s something, there’s some kind of idea. And then others say, well, but let’s work on this idea. We have to improve this – antithesis and then essentially through this kind of dialogue, through this experimentation you get to that higher point of the synthesis. That’s what I’m super excited about in terms of saying ambiguity and uncertainty we always see it as something that feels uncomfortable and it feels uncomfortable, like I’ve been through exactly those kind of uncomfortable periods where you’re like:” Oh my God, I just want to jump out of whatever”. But like now it’s essentially saying: “You know what? It is a necessary part of the process because it is the only way to create a real new insight.
Ali Jawad: [00:14:28] And that’s very interesting. I first thought of the focus of my PhD five years ago. It was based on 10 years of experience in the sport and seeing the gap in the literature. So, I knew what I wanted to do about five years ago. Given what you have said , that early certainly scares me. Given what you have said, I will go find other sources to contribute to my thesis. Nobody’s actually mentioned your approach to me before. What you’ve said today has made me rethink about different kind of literature that I can use from medicine to law, to actually justify the points I’m trying to make. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a doctor. So, I will use these additional elements to inform my thinking.
Dr Christian Busch: [00:15:22] And that’s super interesting because, if you think back in history, the kind of Leonardo da Vinci types, nowadays it seems so weird, that they were philosophers and mathematicians and like engineers all at the same time.
Dr Christian Busch: [00:15:36] It makes sense because in the past we were able to transfer insights from one area of logic to another. I think, to your point. Right. I feel the more you immerse yourself in other sector, the more you will see: “Oh, my God, this is quite similar to this area. So maybe this area can inform some of this. And then I think that’s where the brilliant outcomes will come from, probably that you that you will connect the dots differently. I’m really looking forward to reading your PhD once it is completed.
Ali Jawad: [00:16:18] [00:16:21] I’m looking at the mindset of somebody with naturally high levels of serendipity. Do you think somebody of that mindset naturally thinks outside their comfort zone? Are they drawn to learn a wide range of topics and subjects relating to their life and their goals? Do you need to be an expert in more than one sector to realise optimum levels of serendipity?
Dr Christian Busch: [00:17:00] On one hand, it’s always easier, of course, to connect dots if you have something to connect them to, right. So, if I have knowledge in a particular area and I see something unexpected, I can say, oh, my God, yeah, I see the barista using the coffee machine in a certain way. So next time I go home I will use my own machine. I might realise oh my God, that was such a coincidence that I had exactly that issue and the risks that can help me out with this explosive whatever, like this kind of unexpected moments where in a way, if you already know a little bit about the coffee machine, that helps you more. But the point is that a lot of times actually we have that hammer nail problem that once we have a hammer and we want to put a nail into the wall, we only see the hammer, even though there might be much better approaches. And so, there’s also a lot to be said to that kind of, you know, having this this little prince. I’m a big fan of that book, which is all about just asking why all the time is something we don’t know anything. And I feel the smartest people I know are constantly saying we don’t know a lot because you realize the more you know, the more you don’t know. And the more you realize that that you don’t then. And so I’m a big fan, actually, of this whole idea that at the end of the day, when you look at serendipity, a lot of times it helps us to have some kind of sense of direction or some kind of like curiosity or interests or something that that helps us to connect the dots, too.
Dr Christian Busch: [00:18:15] But it doesn’t have to be like deep knowledge necessarily. Always, but it can be just the kind of sense for something where we’re going. But at the same time, then the humility and the alertness to say, you know what, I don’t have it all figured out. And I think like to me, this was one of the biggest learnings over the last years. I mean, we just finished, for example, we did an interview series with over 30 of the leading CEOs in the world who run big businesses like MasterCard and Procter Gamble and so on. And essentially what turned out with all of these wonderful people is that they all somehow are relatively good at setting a certain idea of, OK, this is what we’re going as a team, but then at the same time have this kind of ability to say we also need to understand that the unexpected happens all the time and that we can strategize or plan everything. And, you know, for someone like me who grew up in Germany, where you want to plan everything out, that is anxiety enhancing. We get trained as perfectionists. Right? We want to be perfect. We want to map everything out. But then life happens and it’s not like it’s right. And so, I feel like actually in a funny way, life itself and things like Covid-19 bring us naturally out of our comfort zone already.
Dr Christian Busch: [00:19:22] So actually a serendipity mindset helps us to frame that away from a threat to potential ally. And so, in some ways, yes, out of the comfort zone we speak with people differently, we can talk maybe about some practices we can use to have more serendipity. So, these kinds of practices, some of them push us a little bit out of our comfort zone. But there are other practices that don’t. But at the same time, also, I mean, I think life itself pushes us out of our comfort zone whenever it is unpredictable. And so, I feel if we are then able to actually say, you know what, this is not a sign of imperfection. This is not a sign of us being weak or us not being able to plan things out. But you know what? It’s a sign of having an open mind that we can still do something. And I think that is how if you ask everyone who has ever done something exceptional, a lot of times they will say, you know what, like in those moments where I felt like bad luck was happening, that was the starting point for great luck and that was the starting point for something wonderful. And so that imperfection turned out to be a wonderful thing. And so, I think that’s again, where the grit comes in that you mentioned earlier, to literally see every situation as an opportunity for your life turning into something better in the long run.
Ali Jawad: [00:20:31] Well, I always say that the best plans are the ones that are the most adaptable and flexible. The ones that are too regimented, that you don’t have any room to manoeuvre and you know that plans are unpredictable and always going to change. So, you have to have that element of actually, am I ready for anything that’s going to come my way?
Ali Jawad: [00:20:50] I think the best people can definitely adapt no matter what. The last question: “Which a single person has that you’ve met has had the most certainty for you and has that had a kind of a domino effect on how you have kind of passed on that experience to others?”.
Dr Christian Busch: [00:21:19] I’m a big fan of my Marlon Parker and his team. They created an organization called Reconstructed Living Labs in Cape Town. It’s a very kind of crime ridden and rough setting. And I will never forget the first time I met the team in both Cape Town and then Kenya and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. I asked them: “What is the one thing I should never ask you?”, me, as the kind of person coming into your context and assuming I have some answers, but probably not a lot. And essentially, the gentleman who was part of the team said, well, never ask us what we need, because if that is your first question, you put us in the role of the beneficiary of someone who needs your help. We are the victim. If you come in and say what is already here, how can we make the best out of what’s here? And then we can still work together and do something. And to me, that reframing away from this idea of like resource constraints and some kind of limitation and lack to the idea of there’s always something in every situation, there’s always something there. And so, for example, when they go into a new community that is similarly kind of quote unquote resource constraints, they ask, what is there any here? There’s an old garage. Fantastic. That’s a potential training centre. There’s a former drug dealer. Fantastic. That person will have amazing social capital.
[00:22:39] They will be very resourceful and creative. And if we can turn them into a teacher, they will turn a whole community around. And the point being that really kind of that is when people start creating their own luck because they feel they are not kind of constrained by what they are supposed to be. But actually saying, no, we can break out of this. Of course, at the same time, we have to work on the structural inequality that that is behind it. And I think that’s a big, big thing. And then at the same time, I’m a big fan, just of kind of how do we how do we create the dignity that someone can create their own life rather than assuming that it’s just about pushing resources into a certain context and doing something with it? And so, I just that every moment, everywhere where I am, when I go into a bank and they tell me, OK, we have to close down X, Y, Z branches because of budget crunches. We talk about, well, could the cashier be a financial trainer in the office space? Can that be a training centre for that expertise? So, the idea of we can reframe every situation away from constraint to opportunity. And I think that that that has changed like for me a lot, because it’s really kind of if people in the toughest of environments can do that, I think we can do that as well.Dr Christian Busch: [00:23:46] Yeah, definitely, definitely think of the places I’ve been internationally competing, and I’ve seen the way people live and the way they still find opportunities in the darkest places, and that makes me think all the time, actually. I can do better. I can do that because if they can do it, I’m very, very lucky to be where I am. Actually, I can do better, too. And I guess I think I’ve been very lucky to have them experiences since I was 16. And I kind of live by kind of per experience. Every time I go away, I see something different I’ve never seen before. Even though I’m an experienced athlete, there are still experiences that still take my breath away. And I guess I still have a lot of time to learn.
Ali Jawad: [00:24:40] Thank you, Christian, for coming on the ideaXme podcast today. I’m sure the audience have learnt a lot. I have certainly learnt a lot which I am going to utilise in writing my PhD. If people want to follow you, where can they follow you on social media?
See links below.
Dr Christian Busch: [00:25:12] And it’s been such a pleasure to catch up with you. Your story is extremely inspiring. It is a wonderful example of what can be achieved by making the best out of a situation. It reminds me of Victor Frankl: “How do I see something positive in this moment, how can I leverage it? Even though it is a moment that is extremely dire. Your story is very inspiring. So, thank you so much for having me and for a wonderful conversation.
Ali Jawad: [00:25:42] My pleasure. Thank you.
Twitter: Ali Jawad @AliJawad12 Dr Christian Busch @ChrisSerendip
Linkedin: Ali Jawad alijawad Dr Christian Busch christmianbusch
Credits: Ali Jawad, ideaXme guest interviewer.
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