"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."
"The harder I work the luckier I get."
"Chance favors the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur
The underlying theme of the above quotes is that by preparing yourself or you company for the moment when opportunity arises is mere chance, although chance that a certain event may happen when you are prepared to take advantage of it, but hard work and preparation as well as opportunity that cause results that may appear to be luck.
So what can we do to put ourselves and our companies in a position to be lucky?
Here is a process that will help you be lucky:
- Develop the resources withing yourself and your company to do what you and do it well.
- Develop you skills, employees, systems, process and relationships that will help you take advantage of opportunities.
- You need to keep looking for opportunity. If you make left handed widgets make sure you are looking for opportunities that are available to you to use your expertise in left handed widgets to produce new or innovative products. If you are not looking you will not find.
- Make sure your skills and the skills of you employees are developed enough to be flexible to adjust to new situations and processes.
- Approach all phases of you operation as a process and document how you do what you do, what resources are necessary and the actual steps to perform the operation so the knowledge can be passed on should you lose and employee or adjusted to improve efficiency or to perform a new task.
- Develop outside relationships such as banking that allow you to quickly increase capacity if and when necessary.
