Asher's Blog

One of the easiest mistakes to make in life and business is to see another person succeed, study what they did, repeat their actions and expect the same result.

We assume that if a particular strategy helped someone raise money, it should help us raise money. If a certain routine helped someone build a successful company, we believe adopting the same routine should produce a successful company for us. If one couple had children shortly after getting married, we quietly begin to treat their timeline as the standard for every other marriage. If a friend got a visa, a job, an appointment or a major contract through a particular route, we expect that route to work for us too.

When it does not, we often conclude that something must be wrong with us.

But not everything that works for others will work for you. This does not mean that we should refuse to learn from people. It means we must learn intelligently. We must learn how to separate a transferable principle from a context-dependent formula. Principles may travel across people, industries and generations, but formulas often break when the circumstances change.

Alfred Korzybski expressed this distinction in a memorable sentence: “The map is not the territory.” A map can help you understand the road, but it is not the road itself. In the same way, another person’s story can give you direction, but it cannot reproduce all the conditions of your own journey.

You Are Usually Being Shown an Incomplete Story

When someone explains how they succeeded, they are giving you a map drawn after the journey. They may tell you the decisions they remember, the habits they consider important and the moments that make the story understandable. However, they may not know—or may not tell you—every condition that made the result possible.

They may not mention the introduction that opened the first door, the family relationship that reduced their risk, the timing of the market, the reputation they inherited, the capital they could afford to lose, the passport they held, the location in which they lived or the responsibilities they did not have to carry.

Sometimes there is no dishonesty involved. Human beings simply construct stories from incomplete information. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman describes this tendency with the phrase “What you see is all there is.” We build a coherent explanation from the visible facts, even when important variables remain hidden.

This is one reason success stories must be studied with humility. The lessons may be valuable, but the story is rarely a perfect scientific experiment in which every variable has been controlled.

There is also the problem of survivorship bias. We study the founders who took enormous risks and won, while the many people who took similar risks and disappeared are rarely invited to conferences. We read about the person who left school and built a global company, but we do not build documentaries around everyone who left school and struggled afterwards. The people who succeed become visible, while those who used the same strategy and failed often become invisible.

Business data should make us cautious about simple formulas. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly half of new private-sector business establishments survive for at least five years. That does not mean half of founders were hardworking and the other half were not. It means business outcomes are shaped by many interacting factors, including execution, capital, timing, customer demand, regulation, competition and chance.

The lesson is not that advice is useless; the lesson is that advice must be interpreted.

Start With What May Not Work

Whenever I encounter a new idea, I like to begin with the downside. What is the worst-case scenario? What could prevent this from working here? Which assumptions must be true for this strategy to succeed, and are those assumptions true in my own situation?

Suppose someone tells you that the best way to grow a business is to raise venture capital. Before copying that decision, you must ask several questions. Is your business capable of growing at the speed a venture investor expects? Is your market large enough? Will the capital create a real advantage, or will it simply increase your expenses? Are you prepared for dilution, governance obligations and pressure to produce a particular kind of return? Did the person advising you already have access to investors that you do not have?

The principle behind their advice may be that ambitious businesses need sufficient capital. That principle may be sound. The formula—raise venture capital immediately—may be completely wrong for you.

The same thinking applies beyond business. A friend may recommend a school without considering the personality of your child. Someone may advise you to move to a new country without understanding your family responsibilities. Another person may recommend marriage, investment, ministry or career decisions from the standpoint of their own temperament, opportunities and risk tolerance.

Before applying any lesson, ask:

1. What problem was this person actually solving?
2. What conditions made the solution work?
3. Which of those conditions exist in my own situation?
4. Which important details may be missing from the story?
5. What is the cost if I am wrong?
6. Can I test the idea on a smaller scale before committing fully?

These questions do not make you fearful; they make you responsible.

Copy Principles, Not Personalities

One of the things I have learnt is that personal qualities matter greatly. Two people can use the same strategy and produce different results because they have different strengths, weaknesses, levels of discipline, relationships and capacities.

A highly extroverted founder may grow a business through constant public visibility, events and relationship-building. A quieter founder may produce the same level of growth through deep expertise, an exceptional product and a small number of strong partnerships. One person’s success may depend on speed, while another person’s success may depend on patience. One may thrive with several projects at once, while another needs to give one project relentless attention.

This is why imitation can become dangerous. When you copy someone’s behaviour without understanding the ability beneath it, you may adopt their visible actions without possessing the supporting system.

Instead of asking only, “What did this person do?” ask, “What principle made it effective?”

If a successful founder wakes up at 4 a.m., the lesson may not be that everybody must wake up at 4 a.m. The deeper principle may be that important work requires protected, uninterrupted time. Your own protected time may begin at 10 p.m.

If someone built a company by spending heavily on marketing, the principle may be that distribution matters as much as product quality. It does not automatically mean that your business should copy their budget, channel or campaign.

If a leader succeeds by being extremely demanding, the underlying principle may be that standards matter. It does not mean that disrespect, fear or emotional damage must become part of your leadership style.

Take the principle, examine the context and build an expression that is consistent with who you are and what you have been called to do.

Do Not Use Another Person’s Timeline to Punish Yourself

Comparison becomes especially painful when we turn somebody else’s result into a deadline for our own lives.

You may not have raised money as quickly as another founder. You may not have had children one or two years after marriage. You may not be able to send your children to the same school as someone else. You may not have received the visa, job, appointment or contract that your friends received. None of these outcomes, by themselves, proves that you are lazy, forgotten or behind in life.

You do not know every advantage, struggle, sacrifice or delay in another person’s story, and they do not know everything contained in yours.

Annie Duke makes an important distinction in Thinking in Bets: a good outcome does not always prove that a decision was good, and a bad outcome does not always prove that a decision was bad. Luck and uncertainty affect results. A thoughtful decision can still produce a painful short-term outcome, while a careless decision may occasionally produce a reward.

Therefore, do not evaluate your entire life from one result. Examine the quality of your decision. Ask whether you acted with the information, wisdom and integrity available to you at the time. Learn what the outcome is teaching you, correct what must be corrected and keep moving.

Trusting God Is Not the Same as Refusing to Learn

For me, this is where dependence on the Holy Spirit becomes essential. There are moments when the information available to us is incomplete. We can read, attend training, speak to experts and observe people who have gone ahead of us, but we still have to decide what applies to our own lives. We need wisdom that goes beyond imitation.

Romans 8:28 says, “In all things God works for the good of those who love him.” The verse does not promise that every event will feel good, nor does it say that every plan will work according to our preferred timing. It gives us confidence that God is at work even through circumstances we do not yet understand.

I also believe that this confidence rests not merely on the strength of our love for God, but on the prior and greater reality of God’s love for us. As 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.” Our trust is not based on the belief that we have performed perfectly. It is based on the character of the One guiding us.

That faith must not become an excuse for passivity. The Holy Spirit can lead us to ask better questions, receive correction, abandon an unwise approach, try again or wait when waiting is necessary. Sometimes the process through which God works for our good includes the humility to admit that what worked for somebody else is not working for us.

Faith does not remove learning from the process. Faith makes us teachable within the process.

Trust the Process, but Keep Correcting the Process

“Trust the process” can sound like a call to keep doing the same thing until it eventually succeeds. That is not what I mean.

Trusting the process means refusing to interpret every delay as defeat. It means remaining faithful to the larger vision while being willing to change the method. It means keeping your confidence without becoming stubborn about your strategy.

The person who is truly committed to the destination should be willing to change vehicles when the current one can no longer complete the journey.

This requires humility. You must be humble enough to learn, humble enough to correct yourself and humble enough to admit when an assumption was wrong. You must also be resilient enough to continue. Keep going. Keep trying. Keep pushing. Keep dreaming beyond the evidence of your present circumstances.

However, persistence should not be measured only by how long you repeat an action. Sometimes persistence means changing the action while refusing to surrender the mission.

In business, you may need to change the product, price, customer segment, distribution channel or financing strategy. In your career, you may need another skill, environment or relationship. In your personal life, you may need counsel, healing, patience or a different expectation of timing. The vision can remain constant while the route changes.

Build a Personal System for Learning

Whenever you read a book, attend a training programme, listen to a speaker or observe somebody’s success, do not rush from inspiration into imitation. Create a small process for converting what you have learnt into a decision that fits your reality.

First, write down the central principle in one sentence. If you cannot explain the lesson without repeating the person’s exact actions, you may not yet understand it.

Second, identify the assumptions behind the lesson. What resources, relationships, skills, market conditions or personal qualities does it require?

Third, compare those assumptions with your brutal reality. What do you have? What do you lack? What can you build? What cannot be changed immediately?

Fourth, test the lesson at a scale you can survive. A small experiment produces information without exposing your entire life or company to unnecessary risk.

Fifth, define what success and failure will look like before you begin. Otherwise, emotion will tempt you to reinterpret every result in favour of what you already wanted to believe.

Finally, review the result without condemning yourself; a failed experiment is not a failed life. It is new information. Keep the principle if it remains true, change the method if necessary and allow the experience to refine your judgement. This is how observation becomes wisdom.

My Ambition Is Bigger Than I Am

I have resolved something about my own life and work: whatever I build must become one of the biggest things to come out of Africa and must make a significant impact in the world.

That ambition is one of the reasons I do what I do. I can learn from founders in Silicon Valley, business leaders in Europe, investors in Asia and builders across Africa. I can study their companies, decisions, failures and disciplines. But I cannot merely copy their formulas, because I am not building in precisely the same market, with the same history, customers, infrastructure, relationships or calling.

If something truly significant is going to come out of Africa, it must learn from the world without losing sight of Africa’s reality. It must understand global standards while solving local problems. It must be ambitious enough to compete internationally and grounded enough to build for the people it intends to serve.

That is also true of your life. Learn broadly, but decide personally. Listen to wise people, but do not surrender your responsibility to think. Honour what worked for others, but do not turn their experience into a law God never gave you.

Your journey may take longer; it may require a different route. It may demand that you build capabilities another person inherited. It may contain delays that you would never have chosen.

Still, keep going. The goal is not to reproduce another person’s life. The goal is to become faithful, wise and effective in your own.

Not everything that works for others will work for you. But if you remain teachable, courageous and sensitive to the Holy Spirit, you can discover what will.

References

• Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts
• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
• Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Entrepreneurship and the U.S. Economy
• The Holy Bible: Romans 8:28 and 1 John 4:19