????邁克?莫伯辛當時并沒有想到，周日在大學看球賽竟會幫他在日后找到了一份投行的工作——但這就是所謂的運氣。

????那時還是大四學生的莫伯辛去參加德崇（Drexel Burnham Lambert）高管在紐約舉行的最后一輪面試。這時，高管桌子下面一個帶有華盛頓紅人隊（Washington Redskins）標志的垃圾桶引起了他的注意。

????莫伯辛是一名美式足球球迷，因此，他在15分鐘的面試時間里滿口講的都是對美式足球的激情，卻對銀行業務只字未提。他拿到了這個工作。（幾個月之后，他了解到，這名高管為了錄用他而置其他面試者的評論于不顧。）莫伯辛在他最近出版的《成功方程式》（The Success Equation）一書中寫到：“我的職業生涯始于一個垃圾桶。”

????我們的生活的方方面面都體現了運氣和能力的合力，從我們遇到的人，薪水的多少，一直到壽命的長短，概莫能外。但是理解每個元素的作用則是一件困難的事。

????莫伯辛在業界擁有超過25年的投資經驗。他在書中討論了運氣和能力在體育、業務和投資領域相互碰撞的情況。兼任哥倫比亞商學院（Columbia Business School）教師的莫伯辛說：“我總能感覺到，光意識到運氣的作用是不夠的。下一步應該試著思考如何對它進行量化，最終搞清楚它對決策的影響。”

????為即將上任的首席執行官制定薪資標準，投資哪支共同基金，這些都是商業決策，而商業決策經常會通盤地忽視運氣元素。但認為，之前的成功僅取決于個人能力，卻忽視運氣的作用，莫伯辛認為這種認識是危險的。

????如今，好運氣似乎前所未有地重要。莫伯辛解釋道，這一理論在于，由于全世界人民的能力都在提高，運氣正日益成為區分結果的決定性因素。

????莫伯辛在自己的書里引用了一個棒球案例來說明這一理念——即能力悖論。案例的主角是棒球史上最有名的擊球手之一泰德?威廉姆斯，他是最后一位在整個賽季中擁有平均.400打擊率的球手（這是他在1941年取得的成績）。莫伯辛寫到，并不是如今球員的能力比威廉姆斯那個時代的球員的能力差，而是因為聯盟的標準在提高。他說：“如今頂尖球員和普通球員之間的差距較一兩代人之前的差距要小得多。因此這也就意味著，深藏不露的運氣在決定勝負的過程中發揮著越來越大的作用。”

????莫伯辛說，公司也是一樣，因為當今這個世界奉行的就是勝者為王的法則。同時在市場上銷售同一產品的兩家公司可能會擁有兩種截然相反的業績。他說：“模擬實驗表明，如果你打算一遍又一遍地游玩天下，重播錄影帶，每一遍都會得到不同的答案。”這也是投資具有高風險的原因，尤其是投資年輕的、不成熟的創業公司。當所有的可控成功因素都具備了之后，一點點好運氣就能讓公司平步青云，而一點霉運則可以讓公司走上創業的不歸路。

????對于很多人來說，挑戰在于接受這樣一個事實，運氣是完全不為人的意識所左右的。莫伯辛說，在這一方面，我們的大腦可能是我們最大的敵人，因為我們會本能地去嘗試下結論，同時弄清楚生活中事情的來龍去脈。這些結論通常都沒有考慮運氣，特別是在事情發展順利的時候。人們往往認為成功是個人杰出能力的體現；而另一方面，失敗則往往歸因于糟糕的運氣。莫伯辛說：“我認為這是大環境的一種表象，在這里，‘嗨，如果我做的好，是因為我是一個好人。’如果我做的不好，那么‘天吶，如今的世道不怎么喜歡我。’”

????對于投資者來說，《成功方程式》可能看起來只是過家家的讀物；畢竟，沒人愿意接受這樣的觀點，即他們無法控制公司未來的財務狀況。但是這本書也在某種意義上進行了思考，同時重申了這樣一種觀念：不管怎么樣，我們所有人都在不同程度地受到各種難以理解的力量的制約。

????莫伯辛說：“關鍵在于關注可控的因素。有時候，運氣會眷顧你，有時則不會。但是，只要你盡量讓事情在你的有效控制范圍之內，就沒必要太擔心。”

????Michael Mauboussin didn't realize that watching football on Sundays in college would one day land him his first job at an investment bank -- but that's the nature of luck.

????Mauboussin, then a college senior, walked in for his final interview with a top executive at Drexel Burnham Lambert in New York when a trash can featuring the Washington Redskins logo caught his eye from under the executive's desk.

????A football fan, Mauboussin spent his 15-minute interview discussing a shared passion that had nothing to do with banking. The job was his. (Months later, he learned that the executive overrode reviews given by other interviewers in order to get him the position.) "My career," writes Mauboussin in his recently published book, The Success Equation, "was launched by a trash can."

????A combination of luck and skill contributes to every aspect of our lives, from the people we meet, to how much we earn, to how long we have to live. But understanding the role that each element plays is the tricky part.

????Mauboussin, who has more than 25 years of investment experience under his belt, explores in his book where luck and skill collide in sports, business, and investing. "I'd felt that in every case, being aware of the role of luck was simply not enough," says Mauboussin, who also teaches at ColumbiaBusinessSchool. "The next step should be to try and think about how to quantify that and then, ultimately, what that should mean for making decisions."

????Business decisions, like how much to pay an incoming CEO or which mutual fund to invest in, often disregard the element of luck entirely. But assuming that prior success is merely associated to a person's skill -- and ignoring luck's role -- is dangerous, argues Mauboussin.

????Good fortune seems to be more critical today than ever. The theory, explains Mauboussin, is that as more of the world becomes more skilled, luck increasingly becomes the deciding element that separates one outcome from another.

????In his book, Mauboussin uses a baseball example to illustrate this idea -- known as the Paradox of Skill -- by focusing on Ted Williams, one of the game's greatest hitters, and the last player to eclipse a .400 batting average for an entire season (which he did in 1941). It's not that players today aren't as skilled as they were during Williams' time, writes Mauboussin. It's that the standards in the league have risen. "The difference between the very best guys and the average guys is much smaller today than it was a generation or two ago," he says. "So that means that luck, which has always been lurking in the background, is playing a larger role in determining outcomes."

????The same goes for companies, which are immersed in a social world that supports a winner-takes-all mentality, says Mauboussin. Two companies that bring identical products to market at the same time may experience vastly different outcomes. "The simulations show that if you were to play the world over and over, replay the tape, you would get different answers in different runs," he says. That's what makes investing such a risky business, especially investing in young, unproven startups. When all the controllable ingredients for success are lined up, all it takes is a little bit of luck to put one company on the path toward billions -- or a little bad luck to send another spiraling toward the startup graveyard.

????For many, the challenge is simply accepting that luck is completely outside of our control. Our brains may be our biggest enemies in coming to terms with this, as we naturally try to draw conclusions and determine causes for the things that happen in our lives, says Mauboussin. Those conclusions often exclude the role of fortune, especially when things go well. Success is often deemed a result of impressive skill; failure, on the other hand, is often chalked up to bad luck. "I think that's part of the whole system where, 'Hey, if I'm doing well it's because I'm a good guy,'" says Mauboussin. "If I'm not doing well, then 'Gee, the world doesn't like me today.'"

????To investors, The Success Equation may seem starting; after all, no one wants to accept that their financial future is outside of their control. But the book also liberates in a way, reinforcing the belief that no matter what, we are all, in one way or another, at the mercy of forces beyond our reach.

????"The key is to focus on what you can control," says Mauboussin. "Some days things will go for you and some days they won't, but as long as you are doing the things that are in your control as effectively as you can, you shouldn't worry so much."