If bagel machines had been cheaper, one of the world’s greatest ice cream companies might not exist.
Aficionados of Cherry Garcia ice cream may know that I’m riffing on Ben and Jerry, those unlikely ice cream moguls. Their career arc encapsulates two vital life lessons for the rest of us: Be humble, and be resilient; because, in life, “chip happens,” so to speak.
First, a brief recap of the bagel machine saga: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, friends since childhood, initially set out toward independent careers. But when each encountered uncertain prospects, they reunited to launch a venture together, aspiring to open a bagel shop. That plan derailed when the would-be entrepreneurs couldn’t afford the bagel making machinery.
On to plan B: ice cream making, where devoted fans soon enjoyed their tasty products, and the two founders eventually enjoyed a tasty financial windfall when Unilever purchased their company for $326 Million in 2000.
But what if bagel making machinery had been more affordable? Would Ben and Jerry have enjoyed similarly spectacularly success if schmearing caramel cookie dough onto bagels? Who knows, but one has doubts.
At first glance, their saga seems unique: Who else among us has pivoted from would-be bagel-maker to ice cream industry titan?
But their story embodies two universally-relevant life lessons that every successful entrepreneur, parent, department head, or corporate titan ultimately has had to learn: Be humble, and be resilient.
First, be humble: Accept the large role that luck and chance play in life and business. Ben and Jerry’s ultimate success undoubtedly reflected their dedication and acumen. But a giant scoop of chance also factored in: It wasn’t brilliant strategic insight but the prohibitive cost of bagel machinery that first nudged them toward a more fortuitous trajectory.
Chance figures crucially into everyone’s life. But many of us have a hard time acknowledging that fact, especially if we’ve been successful. Researchers have uncovered a curious “bug” in the way we humans assess our own successes: We characteristically tend to underestimate the role that chance has played in our successes, and instead attribute too much credit to our own hard work, skill, and insight, a tendency known as, “hindsight bias.”
For example, after a few successful stock investments amidst a steadily rising stock market, we tend to credit our stock-picking acumen and subconsciously downplay the fact that favorable market conditions surely boosted our returns. That same thinking pattern is equally evident in other arenas, for example, when assessing successful career choices, hiring decisions, or business ventures.
This bias can lead what psychologists call the “illusion of control,” which can be deeply self-sabotaging. When we attribute too much of our successes to our own ingenuity, we are prone to overconfidence, the conviction that we will consistently make savvy calls. The lucky stock picker in a rising market becomes cocky and eventually blunders into dumb trades.
Or, faced with some thorny business problem, we trust our gut instinct too much; we forego sufficiently painstaking analysis. Or, we brush off the input of colleagues who might have far more relevant insight regarding some business challenge we face.
Wise leaders instead fight the temptation to trust their own purported brilliance. The smartest decision makers turn out to be the humblest ones. They resist overconfidence, do their homework, solicit input, and remain mindful that yesterday’s great decision doesn’t guarantee tomorrow’s. They guard against the “illusion of control,” accurately perceiving the role that luck and chance have likely played in their past successes.
Which gets to our second lesson: Be resilient, because, in life, “chip happens,” so to speak. Real world outcomes rarely unfold according to the master plan. Many would-be entrepreneurs can’t cope with that unpleasant reality. They fold their cards when first confronted with some seemingly impossible obstacle: in Ben and Jerry’s case, the prohibitively high cost of bagel machinery.
Successful people instead accept that “Plan A” almost never works out. In today’s volatile environments, one can’t possibly predict, much less control, every hurdle that will emerge as one translates some ambitious aspiration to on-the-ground reality. Instead, business (and life) will typically unfurl as a succession of wrong turns, roundabouts, curveballs, and challenges.
Sure, everybody already knows all that, but often at only a sterile, intellectual level. Few are ready when it happens to them personally. It’s one thing to read about resilience in a leadership book, quite another to accept a humiliating setback stoically as the crucible in which resilience and creativity are being forged.
Be humble: Fight off the illusion of control. And be resilient: Accept that real life is rarely “smooth, soft serve ice cream”; more often, it’s a rocky road.
