Fortune Cookie Mornings

Twenty years ago I left the rat race of the corporate world behind, I found myself able to indulge in luxuries that were once out of reach during my youth. Cars, family trips, homes and racehorses took up much of my time but before I retired I also had the simple luxury of having the time to personally drive my kids to school many mornings on the way to work.

As we cruised down the road in the early hours, a sense of peace and contentment often filled the car. My children, as typical teenagers do, mostly kept to themselves and avoided interactions with me, and today I wonder if they even remember the rides to school. During those rides, every now and then, I would imagine they would open up and share their thoughts, though I’m sure it was more my desire to talk than theirs. They called those mornings “fortune cookie mornings”.

The sunlight streamed through the windows often, casting a warm glow over our conversation. The familiar sights of our neighborhood passed by in a blur as we chatted about many things. These moments were precious to me, as I savored each one knowing that soon enough my children would be grown and gone. But for now, I cherished these quiet, intimate moments with my kids on our daily commute.

On a particularly chaotic morning, I made the foolish decision to try and explain the complexities of understanding variation in the confined space of a car. Of course the kids rolled their eyes, and frankly they still do that today. Nevertheless, I stumbled over my words, attempting to convey the intricacies of data science and practical variation to my children, remembering how I often failed to do this effectively with high IQ executives in my former business world roles. But I pressed on, determined to impart some level of understanding to my offspring.

In a moment of madness, I promised them that if they could grasp these concepts, they would have an advantage over their peers – a rare gift in a drama and emotion driven world where so few truly understand either the logical importance of things or better yet, how to solve problems by determining root causes. After fumbling through the conversation for what felt like an eternity, I ended it with what an old idiot like me would think was a crisp synopsis of what I was trying to impart.

“In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.”

As my youngest daughter looked as confused as the two older children she innocently questioned why she couldn’t have two eyes open and be a better king. I knew my point was lost, and even today only a few of my students have tried to understand the advantages I had throughout life by being able to remove emotion and drama from my business activities, while seeing, solving and predicting more effectively than my competitors utilizing statistical science.

As funny as it seems, that morning my daughter’s comment made me feel conflicted. On one hand, her question seemed silly and reflective of our family’s tendency towards sarcasm and the humor that comes from it. But as I drove across town for an important meeting, her words lingered in my mind. Why settle for just an advantage when true excellence is within reach? Why, as the lion chases us, is my goal to simply outrun the guy next to me? Suddenly, what was once a playful remark from my child had turned into a deep internal debate about ambitions and goals.

That day, I stormed into our boardroom meeting and demanded a dialogue with the executives in my operation. They had presented a good plan to build an internet portal that would allow customers and healthcare providers access data crucial to them providing customer service and eliminate literally millions of phone calls. Prior efforts had failed miserably but after a restructure, our team had inherited a massive but dysfunctional process, neglected by both expensive consultants and internal operations for far too long.

That day I refused to settle for mediocrity. The plan my team proposed was decent, but I knew we were capable of more. So instead of accepting incremental improvement, I challenged them to think bigger. Together, we spent the entire day devising an “ideal” system that would revolutionize functional data exchanges and far exceed all known portals in history.

It may have seemed like just another silly dad Fortune Cookie Morning to my kids, but little did they know that their innocent musings about being stupid enough to simply want to be better than others, when “ideals” were within reach, helped spark a multi-million dollar benefit for our shareholders.

Today I marvel as foolishness surrounds us as people act on opinions, lies, conspiracy theories, and an immense amount of drama laden stories, when the truth is so easily discoverable through statistical science. We do not need both eyes to dominate – just one strategic advantage. While perfection may be impossible, when you understand variation greatness can be achieved.