Today is October 17 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you know your mind well enough not to trust it?”
In his book The Undoing Project, author Michael Lewis wrote this about Daryl Morey, General Manager of the Houston Rockets, “he had a diffidence about him-an understanding of how hard it is to know anything for sure. The closest he came to certainty was in his approach to making decisions. He never simply went with his first thought. He suggested a new definition of the nerd: a person who knows his own mind well enough to mistrust it.”
Morey is a strong proponent of analytical methods, having created the "true shooting percentage" statistic. Morey's basketball philosophy, heavily reliant on analytics, favors three-point field goals over mid-range jumpers, has been dubbed "Moreyball", as a nod towards Michael Lewis's Moneyball.
His hiring followed the Moneyball trend of employing more advanced statistical-based analysis in addition to the traditional use of qualitative scouting and basic statistics. Several teams have hired executives with non-traditional basketball backgrounds, but the Houston Rockets were the first NBA team to hire such a general manager.
In the fall of 2012, he acquired All-Star James Harden via trade from the Oklahoma City Thunder. During Morey's tenure, the Rockets have not had a losing record and have advanced in the playoffs 4 times, including to the Western Conference Finals in 2015.
As Morey noted “Knowledge is literally prediction…knowledge is anything that increases your ability to predict the outcome. Literally everything you do, you’re trying to predict the right thing. Most people just do it subconsciously.”
Morey built statistical models because he knew his mind well enough not to trust it.
How often do you know your mind well enough not to trust it?