A few weeks ago I facilitated a panel discussion between three successful female executives. Prior to the Network Central event we caught up and as I listened to them tell their career stories I noticed a theme. Each of them used the word luck liberally. It got us talking, and later got me thinking, about what role luck plays in our working lives.
Towards the end of my university degree one of my good friends and I went along to a seminar being hosted for law students. The topic was alternative legal careers and they had four or five ex-lawyers come along and talk about the different paths they had chosen. I can’t even remember now what each of them did – though I remember one had started the successful coffee business Merlo – but I do recall, quite clearly, sitting there thinking that it all seemed to come down to chance.
Chance meetings or chance conversations seemed to sow the seeds for opportunities that set them on their particular ‘alternative legal’ career paths. As interested as I was in exploring career options other than simply practising law, from where I sat I couldn’t quite envisage how I could mimic their choices to create a different path.
As it was I had already committed to starting work with a law firm in Sydney, which I did. But for a variety of reasons, which I explain here, I left after less than two years. I was 25 and had decided commercial law definitely wasn’t for me but I wasn’t exactly sure what was for me. My ideas varied: I thought about public policy or working for a smaller law firm, working in-house, I unsuccessfully applied for a legal job at the ABC, but mostly I wondered, as I always had, how I could get into journalism.
Luck intervened when a good friend rang me about a position he’d seen advertised at BRW. It was a research contract position, really aimed at final year university students, but I applied and got one and that led to a position as a reporter.
I did, and do, count myself very lucky for how that unfolded. But, in hindsight, I can see that it wasn’t simply luck. In some ways I had sown the seeds for that ‘luck’ to happen. I had spoken quite honestly to lots of people about my interest in journalism. Having those conversations meant that when a friend saw a position, and a potential break, he thought of me and pointed me in that direction.
When the editor-in-chief organised to have coffee with me and the other researchers in our first week, I told him straight away that I wanted to be a journalist. I explained my situation, said I was thinking about going back to university to study journalism and that I thought working with journalists on a magazine for three months would be perfect to test the waters.
A few weeks later he offered me a job. Luck might have been a factor in those stars aligning but, again, in hindsight, I can see it wasn’t purely chance. I helped create that luck by first applying for the chance to get in front of an editor and by telling him straight away about my interest in journalism. He later said the fact I was a qualified lawyer who had applied for a research position aimed at undergraduates gave him a clear impression of how keen I was.
Another break I always describe as lucky was having an opportunity to be involved with Women’s Agenda. At BRW my interest in gender equality in the workplace grew and it was a topic I wrote about as often as I could. I blogged about it too and I often took part in conversations on the topic through social media. It was my participation in those discussions on social media that led Marina Go to follow me on Twitter. That meant when they needed to find someone to cover for Angela Priestley on maternity leave, my name was on their radar.
When I stop and think about it, I can see that little things I did played a role in creating some of my ‘luck’. It’s the same conclusion that Liz Anne McGregor, Christine Bartlett and Maria Halasz reached in their conversation the other week. Little things that might have seemed incidental at the time have actually created the platform for bigger things in their careers later on.
Being told to create your own luck can seem trite and tricky. But equally being open to opportunities and recognising how influential the choices you make can be, is a good place to start. You might become luckier than you have ever thought.
Do you believe you can create luck? Has luck helped you?