This is one of the questions posed in a new book Luck: What it means and why it matters, by former cricketer (ex-Middlesex captain) Ed Smith. He argues that luck has become a taboo subject in our culture. This is especially true, he says, in the world of sport. It is also widespread in other areas such as business, where hard work, strategic focus, implementation and talent are seen as the route to success. They all play a part in achieving success, but the role that luck plays is often dismissed.
Smith has touched upon a very uncomfortable truth, which is that we cannot control everything, and that chance performs a bigger role in our lives than we like to thunk. Even though we know this instinctively, we shy away from admitting it openly, When The Guardian reviewed my book on entrepreneurs some years ago it smirked at my comment that luck had played a part in some of the business successes. But I was only telling the truth. More than that, a number of those whom I interviewed pointed to the element of luck in their company’s rise.
How do you explain the experience of a fast-growing chemicals company, on the look-out for a specific type of acquisition, that not only finds exactly what they want, but discovers afterwards that the acquired company exceeds their wildest dreams? “It was an Aladdin’s cave of chemical processes,” the new owner said to me. Or, what about the company chairman, who needs to fill the post of research director quickly, who mentions this to a friend at lunch, only to be told: “I think I met the person you need this morning, and he wants to move. Your company could very well be the one he’s looking for.” Or, take the case of the start-up management consultant, who goes to a boxing match at the Grosvenor Hotel in Park Lane, London, and finds that he is sitting next to his first client, who then introduces him to others.
In his book Ed Smith cites one of the three Nobel laureates who discovered the structure of DNA, John Watson. Watson told Smith that he and Crick were lucky, firstly because he and Crick met at all, and secondly because their principal foreign competitors would not collaborate with each other. If they had, Watson speculates that it would have been they, not Watson, Crick and Wilkins, who would have earned the Nobel prize in 1962.
So be open to the chance event that occurs in your life and recognise its potential for your growth.