Albert-Laszlo Barabasi believes there is and he has written a book about the science behind why people succeed or fail.
Barabasi is a big data guy. He heads Northeastern University's Center for Complex Network Research where they slice and dice prodigious amounts of data to understand the "why" behind all sorts of topics.
One of the topics is success. Why do some people succeed and others fail? Why do some ideas gain traction and others never see the light of day? Why does one song get hours of air time and another is never heard? Why is one piece of art considered a masterpiece and another a piece of junk?
Barabasi and his team spent several years harvesting mountains of data on human accomplishment in various fields to find these answers. From that work they began to see a series of recurring patterns that drive success in most areas of human performance.
I have spent a good deal of time considering the topic of success myself over the years. In fact, I speak on the topic of "The Science of Success" from time to time.
In my experience, success is the product of competence plus connection. Some people find success because they are extraordinarily competent in what they do. They are knowledgable. They are highly skilled. They have abilities that others don't. Competence is developed over time through practice, perspiration and perseverance.
Some people find success primarily because they have extraordinary people skills. They connect well with other people and are good at using those skills in developing networks and using those connections to their advantage.
Most people find success by expertly using one of these two dimensions. It is the rare individual who can bring high levels of both competence and connection to the table. These are the people who are usually the superstars in any discipline.
It turns out that Barabasi's research confirms that the connection element might even be the strongest element of success in most disciplines.
That is because in so many fields it is difficult to differentiate who is the most competent or skilled. There is simply no objective measure to separate the great from the near great. There are a great number of people who perform well. It becomes difficult to differentiate between among them.
We know that Usain Bolt is the fastest human because there is an electronic stop watch that tells us. Look at this overhead image of the finals of the 100m dash at the 2016 Olympics which Bolt won. There is not much that separates these men. It literally is hundreds of a second.
This is a fact of life in most areas of human performance. There are a lot of people who can perform at a high level. There are a lot of great singers, winemakers, actors, attorneys and accountants. Why do some find more success than others?
This is answered by the First Law of Success in The Formula.
Performance drives success, but when performance can't be measured, networks drive success.
In my words, competence drives success but the most successful have used their connections to separate themselves from the masses. Their personal connection with people and connections with networks of people puts them at another level compared to the competition.
There is no discipline that this is more apparent than in the arts. Why is a masterpiece a masterpiece? After all, it is a subjective determination. Barabasi found that it is totally dependent on the invisible network of curators, art historians, gallery owners, dealers, agents and auction houses who determine what gets into museums and the price they are willing to pay for them.
In my recent post on Fame I wrote that Andy Warhol was the second most famous artist of all time. For a while he was the highest-grossing artist in the world. Barabasi attributes that success primarily due to the fact that Warhol recognized early on that his success as an artist was tied more to his connections to the key people in the art network than his skill as an artist.
We see this every year as well on television. Look at the unknown talent that shows up on shows such as American Idol and The Voice. What was missing before with these talented people? A connection to allow that competence to be realized. That connection is the visibility they receive on tv and the expert judges who give the performance additional credibility.
Barabasi delineates four other Laws of Success in his book but I believe it is the first law that most people should pay the most attention to.
In many ways Barbabasi believes that evaluating success is akin to the age-old question of whether there is any noise in the forest when a tree falls down but there is no one to hear it.
Performance--or what you do--is an individual endeavor. You define it and control it yourself. In other words, you can give a performance equal to Pavarotti when you are singing in the shower. However, it does not make you equal to Pavarotti. Success is a collective measure. It captures how people respond to our performance. Barabasi puts it this way.
Your success isn't about you and your performance.
It's about us and how we perceive your performance.
My advice in all of this.
Work hard on your area of competence.
Work even harder on the connections that make people appreciate your performance.
That is the true formula for success.
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