It's dangerous to know one thing
The Book of Five Rings—Assume tomorrow is not like yesterday—Numerical lessons from the Iowa State Fair
Hi all,
Thank you for your patience over the last few months as I took a brief hiatus from writing Thoughts from a Bench to work on my graduate school applications. I’m feeling refreshed, pregnant with new ideas (and new vocabulary).
Looking forward to picking-up again on a bi-weekly basis.
Have a good rest of your weekend!
—Brendan
The story. In my first few 3 years as a consultant, I primarily served one single client. I became in expert in this one specialized part of their division. Having this expertise made me feel important and successful, and I saw a clear path ahead for more promotions and success. Being so narrowly focused in one field, though, I also sensed I was falling into a rut. I needed to test myself with a completely new challenge. I needed to experience being the dumb person in the room for a change. Otherwise, I felt I would get addicted to being the one who knows the answers. Without being challenged, my growth would plateau. Without new problems to solve, my perspectives would narrow.
This week’s newsletter is about the importance of developing broader perspectives, skills and experiences. To remain successful at what we do, we must constantly re-invent ourselves and try to see problems in a new light.
#1 Musashi’s lesson
"It is dangerous for a warrior to know only one thing. It will eventually create shortsightedness and limit the possibilities for additional growth. What is the sense of knowing a thing to such a degree that you become oblivious to other things?"
—Miyamoto Musashi, (The Book of Five Rings)
Miyamoto Musashi was a renowned Japanese samurai who had a fighting record of 61 and 0.
He never approached any of those fights with the same playbook. Sometimes he would arrive late to the duel to make his enemy sweat; sometimes early to catch him unprepared. Arriving to his duel with Sasaki Kojirō, Mushashi ditched his usual double blades for a massive wooden sword carved from the oar of a boat. He won the duel with a stroke to Kojirō’s head.
Musashi understood that consistent success demands consistent change. A warrior must avoid rigidly sticking to weapons and techniques that have only worked in the past, because each new competitor and circumstance is different.
This lesson applies in the business world, too.
#2 What has made Sequoia Capital so successful for 40 years?
"We've always been afraid of going out of business. […] We've worked hard on trying to figure out how we make Sequoia endure. We've assumed that tomorrow isn't like yesterday. We can't afford to rest on our laurels."
—Michael Moritz, (2013 interview with Charlie Rose)
Just like Musashi, Michael Moritz, the former chairman of Sequoia, emphasizes the importance of constant evolution to stay ahead of the competition. Only about 10% of companies in the 1955 Fortune 500 were still on the list in 2021. Even the largest corporations, with millions in capital and thousands of smart people, struggle to outpace the competition for more than a few decades.
Netflix started as a DVD company, turned into a streaming service, and now produces its own content. A warrior cannot know one thing.
Morgan Housel writes that one of the key sources of competitive advantage is the ability to learn faster than your competition. The ability to quickly learn new skills and perspectives means you can continually adapt to the current battle—even if it means throwing away your familiar weapons. As he writes, “few things are more powerful than strongly believing in an idea (focus) but being willing to let go of it when it’s proven wrong or outdated (humility).”
This lesson ties directly to what we’ve learned from both Musashi and Moritz. We must continue to re-invent ourselves to remain successful.
A flexible, open mind can also help us make better decisions.
#3 Develop a broader perspective to remove blind spots
Developing a broad set of mental models is critical for removing blind spots. Most of us tend to specialize in a particular field. […] [W]e see the world through our chosen discipline. An engineer sees the world in systems. A biologist thinks in terms of evolution. But the person who can see the world through systems and evolution will make wiser choices and avoid more mistakes. Putting these disciplines together allows us to walk around a problem in a three-dimensional way.
—Shane Parrish, “Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions”
At the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, fairgoers eat loaded taters on a stick and enter a competition to guess the weight of one the state’s largest boars, “Sasquatch.” One person guesses 930 pounds, another, noticing Sasquatch’s meaty haunches, guesses 1,273. Boar-weighing officials average all 130 guesses and arrive at a number: 1,009 pounds. Sasquatch is then weighed: he’s 1,012 pounds.
The Diversity Prediction Theorem in mathematics implies that any collection of diverse models (or people) will be more accurate than its average member. You may also know this as the wisdom of the crowds.
Usually, we have to make decisions on our own; we can’t poll the crowd like in Iowa. But, as Shane Parrish points out, we can make better decisions by seeing the situation from multiple, independent perspectives within our own head. Taken together, as the Diversity Prediction Theorem shows, this aggregation of perspectives will be more accurate than any individual one.
If it is dangerous for a warrior to know only one thing, it is also dangerous for a warrior to see a battle from one perspective. Mushashi also emphasized this, writing:
“A man cannot understand the perfection and imperfection of his chosen art if he cannot see the value in other arts. […] To learn the sword, study the guitar. To learn the fist, study commerce. To only study the sword will make you narrow-minded and will keep you from growing outward.”
Further Reading: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein
Thanks for reading! I love when these thoughts lead to conversations with readers. Did you find anything interesting or surprising? Reply to me and let me know.