It’s 2016, and I’ve been invited to Juan’s to play poker with a few of the staff from school. I’ve never played poker before, barely played any card games beyond 21 when I was in primary school.
As the evening progresses, I keep winning. By the time the night is done I’ve taken all the cash from my host and his friends. They’re all clients I have to face tomorrow.
Beginner’s luck or a buried skill in strategy?
As the German’s say, “jein” (ja and nein, ‘a bit of both’).
Oxford University’s Mathematics department shared this gem from David Spiegelhalter just before the new year.
He shuffles the playing cards in his hand, this way and that. And with the confidence “to bet all the money in the world”, as we all said as kids, he pronounces that no-one in the history of anything has ever shuffled those cards in that way before.
If you’re like me, you have a niggle of doubt. Surely someone has come close? Surely someone has actually done it. There are only 52 cards, so how on earth can there be that many combinations?
Well the maths shows the facts. There are approximately 80,658,175, 170, 943, 878, 571, 660, 636, 856, 403, 766, 975, 289, 505, 440, 883, 277, 824, 000, 000, 000, 000 ways to shuffle a 52-card deck.
So there’s a massive amount of beginner’s luck when you play any card game, based on the shuffle and then the draw. And then there’s a smidge of strategy to use whatever you’ve got judiciously.
School strategies tend to be the same.
I’ve researched and completed upwards of 200 strategies for schools, political parties, governments and companies. Here’s what I notice:
The research nearly always turns up the same things. When you ask people what’s not working, and what is, it’s often the same stuff. Amateurs get disappointed by this. Experts spot the tiny detail that’s a tell of something worth investigating more. There’s gold in those chips that become ravines.
The research nearly always turns up a single gem that is worth diving into. This is the luck of the draw, and you’ve got to be well-practiced to spot it. Amateurs treat it as an outlier, a statistical blip or squeaky wheel not worth paying attention to. The Expert digs deeper and works out why that outlier was there in the first place.
The most likely strategy and the least likely strategy probably won’t work - you’ll be predictable like the person who can’t hold a poker face (or the one who’s trying too hard). The most convincing strategies emerge from debating the nuance in the middle to the point it becomes sharp focussed. No-one likes working in nuance. When you do, you’re far more likely to win.
You can play card games alone and go so far. When you play as a team you increase your chances of winning.
That means everyone in the team has to be equally skilled in executing the game, and share the same vision of how the game is going to be played before they get started.
Experts don’t waste time writing strategies and hoping that people know what to do.
Experts invest in their people, to make sure that their skills in leading projects, crafting fresh vision for them, project managing the work, and building positive relationships to weather tough work.
Expert or amateur? There’s a question to ask today.