Losing the cause for the outcome

Destined to fail

By copying an agentic person, you can never be one.

People often pursue what they believe to be success by looking at the lives of others and attempting to replicate their accomplishments. This sketches a clear path from point A to point B with tangible and precise goals.

Rather than putting in the requisite effort to create their model, they follow a trodden path.

They are destined to fail.

Luck and probability play a significant part in your life’s progression.

If you mimic the accomplishments of others so precisely that slim misses disrupt your entire trajectory, you will often find your pathway obstructed, simply due to the variability of real life.

So, as you chase after the same outcome as someone else, you will find yourself woefully and constantly behind.

You will not experience a replication of their life; all their achievements sprung from each previous one as free acts of creation, while all of yours would have been shackled prescriptions offering you no room for natural growth.

These people lose the cause for the outcome.

The world tends to reward agentic humans: people who have the capacity and ability to will things into the world based on what they value.

Successful people are successful due to the cause behind the outcomes, not due to the outcomes themselves.

Yet, as observers, we only see the list of accomplishments and we err by simply aiming straight for them.

Warren Buffett is not a great investor because of his investments in Apple, Coca-Cola, or American Express, nor because of the specific financial models that he constructed to make these decisions. He is a great investor because of his process, and the ‘why’ behind his decisions. So, if you want to be a great investor like Warren Buffet, and fixate on the specific outcomes he achieved, you will be comparatively unsuccessful.

People fixate on the specific steps others take, rather than the reasons underpinning those actions.

You would not today buy Apple, Coca-Cola, or American Express and expect the same level of success as Buffett once had. While this seems obvious in this context, it is not viewed in the same way when we consider broader decisions.

Similarly, people often attempt to replicate the models of successful businesses, which never yields the same results. It is not their exact steps that made them successful, but the fact that they were able to meet current market demands.

Before Microsoft was started, it would be smart to start a company like Microsoft, yet afterward your company may be doomed to fail due to market saturation.

Now, just because one company enacts a strategy, or “core reason” that works, does not mean that strategy is transpositional to your decisions.

Beware of advisors who say OKRs, KPIs, and specific frameworks worked for others and will of course work for you: they have lost the cause for the outcome.

They are chasing steps rather than chasing the why.

People make the case for faking-it-til-you-make-it, and I do appreciate how this creates a bias for action.

Long term, however, faking-it-til-you-make-it is damaging and stunts growth.

You can never realize the full potential of a path when your actions are simply going through the motions without intent.

If you think you cannot be an agentic person, model yourself after one, and then do everything you can to not be them.

Re-focus on the cause, not the outcome.

The outcome will come far faster.