Reliable presence is claimed to account for most of what separates those who succeed from those who do not.
The claim travels because it is actionable and flattering to the ordinary. What it names is real enough: a large share of opportunities go to whoever was present and available, and availability is far more controllable than talent. What it cannot support is the arithmetic, which was never measured and is the part everyone repeats.
In practice
- A freelancer who answers within the hour gets work that a better one who answers on Thursday does not.
- A committee's decisions are made by whoever attended, which is a fact about attendance and not about merit.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is opportunity: a share of chances go to whoever is present and available when they arise, and presence compounds through familiarity and trust.
- In its favour
- Reliability is genuinely undervalued, and research on networks finds that repeated contact predicts access to opportunities independently of talent.
- Against it
- The figure is invented and varies between retellings, Allen has said the remark is misunderstood, and in competitive fields presence is the entry condition rather than most of the distance.
- Standing
- The figure is invented, the wording varies between eighty and ninety per cent in different retellings, and Allen has said the remark has been misquoted. The underlying point overlaps with research on conscientiousness and on persistence, neither of which supports a proportion.
- Subject
- Creativity & Work
- Essay
- The success literature and its sceptics