Why successes and failures matters

Decision-Making

Other people conjecture based on case studies and anecdotes. Because so many of the most popular YouTube videos are either funny or cute – involving babies or kittens – you commonly hear that humor or cuteness is a key ingredient for virality.

But these “theories” ignore the fact that many funny or cute videos never take off. Sure, some cat clips get millions of views, but those are the outliers, not the norm. Most get less than a few dozen.

You may as well observe that Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and Bill Cosby are all famous and conclude that changing your name to Bill is the route to fame and fortune. Although the initial observation is correct, the conclusion is patently ludicrous. By merely looking at a handful of viral hits, people miss the fact that many of those features also exist in content that failed to attract any audience whatsoever. To fully understand what causes people to share things, you have to look at both successes and failures. And whether, more often than not, certain characteristics are linked to success.

“The winners all did it.” Splendid. What did the losers do?

That second question ruins an astonishing amount of business wisdom. Viral videos contain kittens, successful founders wake early, famous brands use humour and senior leaders possess a suspicious fondness for black knitwear. The missing population is less photogenic: the unseen cat clips, dawn-rising bankrupts, funny adverts that sold bugger all and executives whose jumper never acquired a Wikipedia page. Success gets interviewed. Failure has its pass revoked at reception.

A winner can suggest a hypothesis; it cannot award itself causation. Put the supposed ingredient into a proper comparison. Did it appear more often among successes than failures? Did it precede the result, or enter the story later because biographies require foreshadowing? Are there winners who did the opposite? The point is not to drain anecdotes of colour. It is to stop one charming case becoming compulsory policy for everybody else.

Managers often prefer the fairy tale because a repeatable formula feels purchasable. Base rates are rude guests: they mention timing, selection, luck and all the corpses cropped from the keynote. Invite them anyway. If the magic feature thrives equally in triumph and disaster, it is decoration. Renaming the leadership team Bill may still be cheaper than a transformation programme, but the evidence is identical.