Where does skill end and circumstance begin?

Questions for you:

When evaluating my own successes or failures, how much do I attribute to skill versus circumstances beyond my control?
Am I too harsh on myself when outcomes don’t match my preparation, without accounting for random factors?
In what areas of my work are the margins so fine that random variation might exceed the differences in capability?

Questions for your organisation:

Do our performance evaluation systems account for the role of chance in outcomes, especially in high-stakes situations?
Are we drawing too many conclusions about individual capability from single high-pressure events?
When comparing team or individual performance, how do we distinguish between genuine skill differences and random variation?

Further reading

A report from 2024 about Peaty’s positive Covid test the day after the 100m breast stroke final: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/articles/crgl6n0x39eo

There’s also something about Peaty’s physiology, the result of course of the random selection lottery of genes, that makes him particularly suitable for swimming breast stroke, according to this article: https://mensfitness.co.uk/features/adam-peaty-interview/

And there are a surprising number of factors that can make a swimming pool “fast”:https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/what-makes-a-pool-fast/