The Role of Luck in Business

More than once, successful executives have emphasized to me the importance of luck. “A lot of our success,” they said, “is simply being in the right place at the right time. We were lucky, and we succeeded.”

There’s a crucial distinction between luck and success. Success means achieving what you want, while luck involves wanting what you have. The challenge with luck is its unpredictability; you can’t create it or control it. We can’t rely solely on it for success, yet we might miss recognizing our good fortune.

Many people experience luck but fail to benefit from it—they miss the train. Sometimes, they don’t even realize there was an opportunity to seize, that they were lucky in the first place. Why is that?

The secret to the success of any company, country, or relationship lies in the ratio of external integration to internal disintegration. External integration occurs when a company’s capabilities align with market opportunities. It’s measured by sustainable sales growth and an increase in market share. Internal disintegration, on the other hand, reflects the level of mutual trust and respect within the organizational culture. If mutual trust and respect are missing, destructive conflict, miscommunication, and wasted time on internal power struggles can ensue.

This formula predicts success because, in physics, energy at a given moment is fixed. Energy wasted on internal disintegration isn’t available for effective competition in the marketplace. It’s like having just one pair of eyes—you can either focus on what’s happening inside your company or outside it. If destructive conflicts prevail internally, leadership may overlook market opportunities, their attention consumed by internal strife while luck waits just outside.

To benefit from luck, a company must be poised to recognize it and capable of capitalizing on it. A culture free from internal disintegration certainly helps. Luck tends to favor those ready to embrace it. The so-called unlucky are often not unlucky at all; they simply aren’t prepared to accept the luck that comes their way.