The Unimportance Of Luck

Not everyone is dealt a straight flush. It would be unfortunate indeed if you have a thirty-year career and never get a solid break. But if you’re running a vada-pav* shop in a small town, what can you expect in terms of luck? That one fine day everyone’s going to say, ‘Hey, I’ve got to have a vada-pav and I know exactly where I’m going to get it!’? Suddenly your reservations go up 3x? Not going to happen.

But this other guy on the other side of town has booked space in a new mall with growing footfall. In three months, his sales are thrice yours. Did he get lucky? Did you get unlucky? Neither. You create your own environment. Then you take advantage of the opportunity.

Exactly how much the odds were stacked up against us and how little luck had to do with the outcome came home to me during one particularly interesting interaction with Rupert Murdoch. When News Corp still owned a good part of UTV, I was in Los Angeles to meet Murdoch in his frugal suite: a modest office (for the leader of one of the world’s largest media companies) with an adjoining meeting room that held a maximum of eight, and a small outer space for his two executive assistants. After a twenty-minute chat on the overall India macro-economic scenario and an update on the media, he got up from his chair and walked me over to an old aerial photograph of what would eventually become Beverly Hills and Century City.

‘You see this massive patch of land? The buildings? Fox owned all of it. When Cleopatra bombed in 1963, the company was forced to sell three-fourths of it. The company was left with this,’ he said, tapping his finger on a much smaller parcel. ‘It’s some of the most expensive real estate in the world today.’ He smiled as we moved towards the outer office. ‘Of course, all that was before my time, before I bought Fox.’

Murdoch wasn’t really making a specific point. UTV had yet to even consider getting into the movie business. But his message was clear. Business, at its core, can be unpredictable and fragile. Those trucks can come barrelling your way at any time. Despite your biggest, most disappointing setbacks, you can and do move on. After all, here was a leader talking about his insights with pride and clarity. Although he could easily have afforded the best art in the world, Murdoch decorated his conference room with a memento mori. Not by accident.

As I walked to the parking lot, I thought about my conversation with Murdoch. The world sees Cleopatra as one of the magnum opuses of all time, a grand success that swept the Oscars that year. My mind goes back to the wonderful chemistry between screen legends Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and I can only think of that film as a classic.

As with most things in life, there’s another side to every story.

*vada pav: A popular Indian street food item.

[In my book Dream with your Eyes Open I have shared my thoughts on Luck and how it does or does not play a part in what we do and how we succeed or scale. I am not a great believer in luck, but do believe we need to be always very open minded to opportunities so when we land in the right place at the right time. We know what to do with what we all call "luck".  To order your copy, head to https://www.dreamwithyoureyesopen.org/buy-book/ ]