Uncertainty, Chaos and Luck
“Victory awaits the one who has everything in order—people call that luck.
Defeat is certain for the one who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time—this is called bad luck.”
— Roald Amundsen, The South Pole
I borrowed the title of today’s post from Jim Collins’ book Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All.
Together with his research team, Collins set out to identify the key factors that enable organisations to remain sustainable in a rapidly and unpredictably changing world. Reading the book makes one thing clear: luck has very little to do with it.
What matters are the choices leaders make—how they build and lead their teams based on the goals they have set.
The race between Amundsen and Scott to reach the South Pole in 1911 is a powerful analogy for today’s economic environment. The objective was clear to everyone: achieve an extraordinary result by becoming the first team to reach the South Pole.
Similarly, every entrepreneur creates a company with the ambition to accomplish something meaningful. The goal should inspire team members to give their best and create value for customers. When everything works together, the reward is either increased company value or profit.
Both leaders assembled teams prepared to face a challenge filled with uncertainty and unpredictable situations. Today’s economic environment is very similar: no one can accurately predict what the coming weeks will bring.
Although both teams had the same goal, their approaches to achieving it were radically different. So were their results.
One team experienced the joy of victory together and returned without losing a single member. The other team also reached the Pole, but the expedition ended fatally. They had exhausted all their energy, and the final members died just ten miles from a supply depot.
The seeds of both success and failure were planted during the preparation phase.
Building the team
Amundsen personally selected every member of his team, carefully considering who was best suited to each role and which competencies, skills and experience were required.
Scott’s team was assembled by the British Royal Academy—effectively a recruitment agency—from capable people and financial backers. Some conspiracy theorists believe this was the root cause of the team’s failure.
Preparing the team
Amundsen prepared his team deliberately and over a long period. He learned from Arctic peoples who lived in extreme conditions and understood how to travel long distances across polar terrain.
This knowledge also shaped the technology he selected: simple solutions that had already been tested in extreme conditions, from dog sleds to the team’s clothing.
The dogs also provided a secret competitive advantage. As supplies decreased during the expedition, fewer dogs were needed to pull the sleds. The remaining dogs—and the team—therefore gained an additional source of food and energy for the return journey.
Scott’s team first came together when the expedition began. They believed modern technology would give them a competitive advantage.
Motorised sledges and ponies were expected to provide superior transport capacity. Both became unusable during the first days in extreme conditions. The engines would not start in the cold, while the ponies sweated and froze to death.
As a result, the team had to pull the sledges themselves. This significantly reduced their speed and consumed additional energy.
Their clothing was also unsuitable for the conditions. It was made from modern, non-breathable materials. Moisture produced by perspiration became trapped in the clothing, where it condensed and froze.
Team culture—the rules of the game
Amundsen’s team followed a strict 20-mile rule. Regardless of the weather, they travelled 20 miles every day.
The purpose was to preserve every team member’s ability to reach the destination—and return alive.
At the end of the day on 14 December 1911, only 30 miles remained between the team and the South Pole. Although they did not know where their competitor was, they maintained their discipline and reached the Pole two days later.
At regular intervals, the team planted black flags in the snow to make navigation easier on the return journey.
Scott had a clear direction, but lacked well-designed routines—a system—and a consistent rhythm—a process—for reaching the goal as efficiently as possible.
In good weather, the team travelled almost 30–40 miles, exhausting its energy reserves. In bad weather, it did not move at all.
Even though Scott’s route from base camp to the Pole was shorter and crossed flatter terrain, his team arrived almost a month after its competitors.
All their energy was spent reaching the goal and dealing with internal political struggles. The return route was not properly marked, and the risks were not managed.
The final team members died because they were lost, exhausted, without a shared plan of action and no longer believed they would survive.
“Friends congratulate me after a quarterly-earnings announcement and say, ‘Good job, great quarter,’ and I’ll say, ‘Thank you, but that quarter was baked three years ago.’ I’m working on a quarter that’ll happen in 2024 right now.”
— The Bezos Letters
Over the past few weeks, while speaking with people from different organisations, I have noticed that organisations fall quite clearly into three groups.
A crisis makes the differences much easier to see.
Organisations preparing for the next period of growth
These are the smarter and more agile organisations. I call them the Amundsens.
They understand that when the crisis ends, the rules of the game will have changed completely. Those who can activate their services quickly and adapt them to changing customer needs will be able to take over work previously handled by large corporate dinosaurs.
The initial solution may be temporary—but we all know what tends to happen to temporary solutions.
The crisis has also created opportunities for small local businesses to become global, as companies everywhere fundamentally reassess how they operate and review their inputs in terms of both price and quality.
Organisations that have adopted a wait-and-see approach
Some entrepreneurs whose companies were already experiencing difficulties—and who recognised that their services were in a declining stage of their lifecycle, with shrinking margins—are now quietly moving towards closing those businesses.
A crisis provides a convenient justification.
The released capital can later be invested in growing businesses with higher productivity. It also removes the need to fight with employees who are primarily concerned with preserving their organisational status.
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