Balls Of Crystal And Steel
If you are able you can strive for all the business know-how you can, but how is it that some people manage to become astonishingly successful, sometimes even without that grounding: and you don't? They can be and often are accused of 'luck', for being - "in the right place at the right time" - and perhaps that is so, and the why of that is perhaps another story, which has in common with this article the matter of also knowing when to grab that 'luck' or leave it.
But where their real 'luck' lies is in the right decisions they make often based on nothing tangible and often ignoring expensive advice and research they themselves have paid for. In fact it is beyond the scientific understanding of 'luck', so I will stop calling it such. Instead I will give you a few examples.
It was said of William C. Durant, the founder of General Motors, that he would - " .... proceed on a course of action guided .... by a flash of brilliance. He never felt obliged to make an engineering hunt for the facts."
In the '40s, Conrad Hilton told a friend to buy bonds in the Waldorf-Astoria, Hilton himself having bought many at the almost rock-bottom 4.50 cents. Other people thought he was mad because the Depression had flattened the hotel business with no light at the end of the tunnel. As we know, it did end and Hilton made $500,000 out of his $22,500. Hilton also wished to buy another company to get hold of one hotel, at that time taken over by the USAF, so was not really worth much as a going concern. The hotel was put up on sealed-bid offers and he first thought of as a fair price, $165,000, but another figure of $180,000 would not stay out of his head and that is the one he finally bid. He won the bid by just $200 and later sold the assets for $2,000,000.
Another sealed-bid, which business-people hate, in 1969, was for potential oil fields in Alaska. One area of six square miles was of interest to the Amarada-Hess-Getty Oil Combine, and most other companies too. AHGOL had already placed a bid, but on the last day Leon Hess suddenly raised their bid to $72.3 million and by doing so, instead of losing the bid he won it by only $200,000. When Hess was asked why, he just said - "I suddenly had a hunch."
An American company in 1961 spent $2,000,000 on new metal extruding tooling only to discover that the new dies only lasted one week. Richard Haupt, its vice-president, realising that running the equipment would only result in "financial disaster" asked five major companies for advice, but something 'told' him to do the opposite of what they and even his company president also advised, and even spent more than twice as much as he should on new, softer, instead of harder, dies, and the results are now common practice within the whole industry.
A stock-broker, Jesse Livermore, on nothing other than a hunch, broke off a holiday to sell strong shares in the Union Pacific Railroad. A few days later the San Francisco earthquake destroyed miles of track and its value subsequently fell as hard and instead of losing his initial purchase-price and more, Livermore made $250,000.
The founder of Holiday Inns, Charles Kemmons, would wisely spend millions on market research on a new site before he bought it, but at other times simply rejected places just because - "I don't like the smell of it."
It isn't only in business either -
It is said that during a heavy German bombing raid, Winston Churchill told his cook and maid to remove it from the kitchen and put dinner on a hot-plate in the dining room instead, then they and his guests retired to the bomb-shelter. On the all-clear they discovered that a bomb had destroyed the kitchen.
Also, once, instead of getting through the held-open door to get into his usual seat in the rear of his car he walked around, opened the other door, and sat in that side instead. Not long after a bomb exploded blowing the car on to two wheels and it was, Churchill said, only his weight in that seat that caused the car to right itself instead of rolling right over.
These people say they have no idea where these hunches come from, but some claim that they are not always just 'feelings' or 'hunches', but a more direct form of 'advice' - It is always said about, and Abraham Lincoln reputedly said himself - "The only falsehood in the statement is that the half of it has not been told" - that he was asked to abolish slavery during long discussions with Nettie Colburn Maynard, a medium, in contact with an ex-slave: that is, she was 'ex' due to being a spirit.
A great Canadian statesman, William Lyon Mackenzie King, wrote in his diaries that he had a great deal of guidance directly from other successful politicians: dead ones.
I will not go in to if that is the source of all such hunches or not(!) but we all have to make decisions, but what sets the greatly successful apart from the rest of us is the ability, and even tested as such
in the USA, to make an often snap decision based on little or nothing and be right beyond the realms of 'chance' and even greater 'expertise'.
Although the latter does help of course. It also helps if you are willing to go with such 'hunches', often costing millions to put in to action, so it is not only 'crystal balls' they have, but 'steel balls' too!
There is, apparently, a simple way to test what type of person you are (if your wallet doesn't already tell you!) - how do you think of time? As a lively waterfall, a motionless sea or as an old man? If it is as a waterfall then you are a 'Dynamic', if the sea you are a 'Naturalistic' and if the old man then you are a 'Neutral'.
In all ESP tests carried out the Dynamics consistently scored above the level of chance and if in a position to do so had doubled their company's profits over the last five years, as compared to the Naturalistics who had made improvements of between 51% and 100%, with the Neutrals having little or no effect or worse.
So perhaps when you are taking on staff you should not ask for 'written applications' or even CVs but just give them that simple test above. Then YOU make sure you have the balls to let them get on with it!
