Rules Of Management

RULE 53 - Capitalize on chance – be lucky, but never admit it

“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President (1801-09)

If you keep your eyes open and your wits about you there will be opportunities, chances, bits of random luck. If you are quick and clever and enterprising you can catch the coat-tails of such moments and ride on the back of them. Such is luck. Grab it while you can, because it is a fleeting thing. You can’t build it into a plan or a budget or a report, but it happen all around you. In fact, the more you cherish it and nurture it and look for it, the more it will happen. We have to believe in luck or otherwise how could we attribute the success of people we don’t like?

“IF YOU WEREN’T SO GOOD AT YOUR JOB, THE LUCK WOULDN’T HAPPEN.”

Now don’t go building your career on luck, it doesn’t work like that. I’m saying we all get a bit lucky from time to time and when that happens you have to hang on in there and go with it – and then keep quite about it. You don’t always have to tell the truth – and all that false modesty sucks. If you were lucky, say, ‘It was a lucky break,’ but say it in such a way that people know months of careful planning went into it, years of research, decades of experience – because that, frankly, is the truth. There is no such thing as luck, but there are moments of random opportunity based on all that work, experience, research, planning. If you weren’t so good at your job, the luck wouldn’t happen. If you weren’t such a good manger, you wouldn’t be quick enough to seize those moments and utilize them.

posted by Right Ranger @ 8:31 PM