A Letter from Chris Suarez

I DON’T BELIEVE IN LUCK

I have often struggled when people refer to the role of good or bad “luck” in  building businesses, meeting the perfect spouse, crossing paths with opportunity, achieving success or experiencing failure.

It has become a common conversation amongst CEO’s, venture capitalists, personal development gurus and others that the role of luck benefits us all.  In fact ignoring it or not acknowledging it has been linked with ego and arrogance.

Truth be told, the reason I’ve struggled with that concept is based on the definition of luck.

luck

/lək/

noun

success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.

Accepting that our outcomes have anything to do with pure luck and less to do with our actions seems to challenge our own agency or self-efficacy.

I do believe that parts of our success or failure may be determined by timing, by circumstance, or through a random sequence of events.  But even amongst all of that, I am convinced it always begins with “one’s own actions.”  It involves putting ourselves in the path of those circumstances or events.

I recently learned that one of Jeff Bezos’ favorite interview questions is,  “Are you a lucky person?”  As he interviewed candidates that would be working directly for him or talent that would be placed on his most important projects, he was looking for someone that considered themselves lucky.  At first, I found that odd for a founder and CEO that was so committed to taking constant action, making bold moves, and committed to controlling the outcome by knocking down KPI’s, benchmarks, and goals.

But a person’s belief that they are “lucky” was an indicator of their view of themselves and the world.  It was a reflection of the fact that they believed that good things would happen in the future, that they would be successful, that they would get the break they needed, and that they ultimately were sure success was on their road map.

Thus the belief in a positive future - even through “luck” - meant that Jeff would be surrounding himself and building his organization with talent that was confident, secure, and optimistic.  A team with that foundation was sure to be successful.  How someone answered that question was an internal glimpse of how they thought of themselves.

I can follow that line of reasoning, and it clearly worked for Bezos on the path to collecting some of the most talented technologists and executives in the world while building one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Even still, I’d prefer to ask questions to gauge where someone might fall on Albert Bandura’s self-efficacy scale.  His studies at Stanford University proved that a person’s belief in their ability - and capacity to execute specific behaviours that led to success - was in fact one of the greatest determining characteristics and factors of success.  In short, a positive confidence was a predictor of talent.

I don’t believe in luck. I do however believe in our ability and capacity to succeed through taking action. The trick is believing those actions will lead to success.  As that belief increases, our positivity grows, and we may find ourselves thinking that we are “lucky”.  What we really are is positive, optimistic, and willing to do the work necessary to succeed.

Here’s to self-belief and doing hard work.

Chris