We have all heard the saying “I just had a lucky break”, or “there is no such thing as luck, I create my own luck”, implying everything is within our control and not subject to external influences. The fact of the matter remains, when looking at people and organizations that do have “lucky breaks”, we discover an intersection between hard work and uncontrollable external facts. The art and sciences towards achieving this intersection is something that high performing organizations have created and mastered over time.
Here are some “lucky break” strategies that will help you create good luck.
Recognize your control
Often people focus a tremendous amount time and energy on issues and challenges that are out of their control. Teams in organizations operating this way start to lose positive momentum towards achieving their goals and people become disengaged in their work.
The solution, recognize what is out of your control, and then shift your focus towards what is within your control and start working on those items. For example, for an organization going through a large change, people will naturally start to focus a lot of time on the bigger issues the leadership team is dealing with and not enough time of what they can control and action do immediately. To become an active part of this type of change people might try learning a new piece of software, or work on their reliance skills to handle the change. Always recognize what’s in your control and act.
Talk to others that have been through a similar experience
We typically proceed down a change path in organizations thinking it’s something new which no one has ever done, which might, in fact, be true, however, there are numerous people and teams in organizations that have been through a similar change. Want to improve your “luck”? Have a conversation with them.
Other people who have experienced similar situations are a great resource for providing guidance on what worked and didn’t work. They can help you and your team reduce the time spent towards having that “lucky moment” because you have invested the time with them learning about their success and failures.
Be agile
Creating those lucky breaks requires a strong ability to be agile. Like surfing, you know where you want to go, however, you cannot always predict the ocean currents and winds required to surf that perfect wave. Like Great surfers who are very agile people (physically and mentally) need to learn how to be agile and responsive in order to react to those “lucky” breaks when they do appear. And remember, there is a big difference between being agile and just “going with the flow”.
Try some of these strategies and before you know it, you will start to have more “lucky” breaks.
All the best in achieving your highest performance.
Paul
Image courtesy of Fred Pinheiro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net