You can be too confident
Is that always a good thing?
Hello to the 3,532 subscribers who read Consulting Intel!
I came across this Note by Dr. Julie Gurner recently.
Dr. Gurner is a brilliant thinker, one of the few voices I usually nod along with, but this time, I disagreed (respectfully: you do not have to be a fanboy to be a fan!)
Her post is about confidence, specifically the glorification of what can be referred to as unhinged optimism (perhaps wrapped in charisma).
Now, confidence, real confidence, is necessary. It is the fuel that gets you to pitch when you are tired, lead when others hesitate, execute when things are falling apart.
Overconfidence is what you get when you drink your own Kool-Aid and start handing out free refills.
A few years ago, we were looking for a consulting partner to come and work for us.
On paper, the candidate at hand was perfect: big pedigree, built a book of business at a competitor firm, had domain expertise, knew our market. When we brought him into the partner panel for a final round, something unexpected happened.
Every single person in that room came out uneasy. He did not lack skill, but he had too much certainty.
Overconfidence is like perfume: it is seductive from a distance but suffocating up close. When someone is too sure of themselves, they stop seeing the terrain and assume the path forward will bend to their will, simply because it has before.
But business is not a straight line. It is war. It is fog. It is luck, timing, positioning.
The dangerous trick overconfidence plays on you is that it mimics competence, and, worse, it often succeeds just long enough to convince you it is competence.
Until the context changes. Until you are not the king in your little pond anymore.
This is where survivorship bias comes in.
You hear from the people who made it. The Steve Jobses. The Bill Gateses. You can be Elon Musk or a psychopath (or both), but it is improbable you will be one more of those mavericks who stared at the abyss and said, “Move.”
For every one of them, there are hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of equally talented, equally driven, equally overconfident people whose names you do not know because they vanished.
You do not hear from the startup founder who spent ten years pitching to VCs and now runs a LinkedIn course on “personal branding.” You only hear the success story, not the statistical noise.
Overconfidence filters out the silent majority: the people who bet big, spoke louder than their competence allowed, and paid the price quietly.
When I was in my twenties, I was living in London, UK.
My flatmate was a sharp guy and a ridiculously good guitarist. He used to jam with this British singer called Dady: Dady had a great voice, insane stage presence, he would make you believe.
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Dady used to say, with a straight face, “I’m going to be the next Michael Jackson.”
Not “I want to be.” Going to be.
He even moved to the US under some VISA scheme he managed to sort out. Did the gigs. Waited to be discovered. Unfortunately, he is now close to 50 and sells vitamin supplements out of a strip mall.
He had the talent. He had the ambition. What he lacked was a mirror.
Real confidence is rooted in awareness. You know the odds, and you play anyway. You account for variance. You stay paranoid. You listen. You win because you see reality clearer than others, not because you ignore it.
Overconfidence is optimism without a seatbelt, smoking a Marlboro while wearing a cowboy hat: it looks cool until the fast turn shows up.
And in business, the fast turn always shows up.
So, here is a simple rule I try to live by: if everyone is clapping, check the exits.
If no one is pushing back, push yourself. And if you ever find yourself too sure you are right, try to remember that every Titanic has its band playing till the very end.
Confidence builds. Overconfidence blinds.
Ciao, until next time! 👋
✍ The Management Consultant
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