No Luck in Leadership
In the world of leadership, success is frequently attributed to luck. But is luck just a matter of chance? Upon closer inspection, it becomes evident that luck is not a random occurrence but rather a direct result of meticulous planning, thorough preparation, and an unwavering commitment to continuous improvement.
In this podcast episode, we explore the significance of strategic planning, resource allocation, and proactive leadership in shaping your own luck. Why leave everything to chance when you can architect your path to success?
Embrace the power of strategic planning, welcome change, and pave the way to achieve your desired outcomes. Cheers!
On this episode you’ll hear…
The difference between good luck and bad luck in leadership
The leadership lessons of the Race to the South Pole expedition
Why the best leaders look at challenges as opportunities
How the company, Food Exploration and Discovery, pivoted its business during the lockdown and found success
The importance of empirical empowerment in leadership
Unveiling the meaning of wise leadership
Ready for more?
Listen in:
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** This is a raw, unedited transcript
Chaili Trentham 00:00
Do you know people who are just lucky people? I think we all can think of people were like, yeah, they have really good luck. So fun fact, I'm one of those people. In fact, my mom called me last week and said, Shaylee, there's this contest on Instagram, you need to enter because you always win when you enter things. And it's somewhat true. But I think I maybe enter more things than the average person. So maybe I wouldn't things because I have this really positive outlook on you don't know until you try. And it's always been a part of my personality. And so I think in a way, luck finds me even down to if I go to a school event, and there is a raffle, I'll buy a ticket. And for some reason, I usually when I, some of you know, was on The Ellen Show several years back. And out of all the people who were screened to play this game show, I was one of the ones selected to play the game show. So luck finds me and opportunity finds me, but a big part of that is I also go looking for it. So I was reading a book earlier this week, and it talked about luck in a really unique way.
So today, we're going to talk about luck in leadership, because I actually don't think that luck plays into a lot of leadership choices. I think that there are leaders who choose to find opportunity, and to lean into that. So here's the quote I came across when I was reading this week, victory awaits him who has everything in order. Luck, people call it defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time. This is called bad luck. So this is a quote by an explorer Roald Amundsen. He was part of an expedition team. He was the leader of an expedition team who made it to the South Pole in 1911. Long time ago, right? And so this idea of good luck and bad luck as he breaks it down is victory awaits the person who has everything in order who has thought about all the details, and some people will call that luck. Well, then the people who didn't take time to think about precautions who didn't take time to strategize they didn't take time to plan. Those are the times when defeat is certain. And some will just call that bad luck. But the reality is when you look at his expedition, so Roald Amundsen was leading a team of explorers to the South Pole in 1911 at the same exact time and the same exact start date as another team team to who was led by a guy Robert Falcon Scott. And maybe you can already jump to the conclusions here based on the quote but and since team reached the South Pole first 34 days before Scott's team. in fact, and since team made it all the way back to tell the tale of their Expedition and of posting up their flag at the South Pole, while Scott's team perished in their journey, home their return journey. Here's the thing. These two leaders took two entirely different approaches to the way that they lead their teams through the expedition. The tragic part about Scott's team is they found their bodies frozen just 10 miles on like a bazillion mile journey right like 500 plus miles across Antarctica. But they found their bodies 10 miles from a supply depot. They had almost made it back. But there was some differences in their strategic planning. And Amundsen was known for being extremely non conventional and his approaches to the way that he explored their stories that he ate raw dolphin meat to experiment in case he was ever in a shipwreck where he only had availability to dolphins and would need to know if he could eat them. So he was always thinking about what could go wrong and what he could change. And on the return journey, almonds return journey. So they plant their flag and the Norwegian flag at the South Pole, they made it first they left a note for Scott's team to let them know that they had made it and they would be heading back and what their journey would be. And then they continued on, and they made it back to their supply depot on the exact day that Ahmanson had planned for. So they went through his journals and they know that everything went according to plan, which was super lucky. However, he had planned to a tee of which they they would leave on which how the climate would change across the timeline of their journey. How Many days it would take them to get back to the supply depot and what they would need to successfully get there. And what would happen if weather suddenly drastically changed or what their contingency plan would be? And so I started thinking about this of good luck versus bad luck of a leader who has made all of those contingency plans. Often might be called Lucky from a person who's experiencing defeat or who feels like they are an unlucky leader in that moment, right? Like, they would say, an unlucky leader might say, Oh, I wasn't given the right resources, or Oh, I didn't have the right team or oh, you know, the market is really volatile right now. It can play down to a fundamental attribution error, right? The idea that when others are making mistakes, other people around us, we attribute it to their character and their traits. And so we say like, oh, that's because they're lazy, or that's because they didn't get their work done, or that's because they weren't prepared. But when it's a mistake of our own and error of our own fault, we often attribute it to external factors, right? So say, an employee shows up late to a meeting, they might say, oh, sorry, I'm late. Traffic was really bad. And in your mind, you might think, right, or you just left late, or I see you holding that Starbucks in your hand. And so you stopped and you start to blame it on character, right? Like, it's not as important to you to be at this meeting, so on and so forth. But when I'm late to work, I'm thinking, it wasn't my fault. It was the car accident that was on the 210 freeway, or it was the traffic that had backed up because of construction, or it was that the drop off line at school was way longer than normal, right. And I tend to put it on external processes rather than think I should have left 10 minutes earlier. Right? That was poor planning on my part. So anyways, fundamental attribution error, found little tidbit there. But when we think about good luck, bad luck, leaders, you have an opportunity to define some of your luck, by the ways that you think about strategic planning and by the ways that you think about reallocating resources and by the way that you have contingency plans for when things go wrong, talked about failure last week, and that's what got me thinking how often we can even attribute our failures to the external factors, right? But when we really begin to look at it lucky leaders are the ones who would look at the volatility of the marketplace or consumer behavior and say, Okay, how do we respond to that, instead of just reacting? Good leaders, I think reject the idea that everything is left to luck or chaos or confusion and instead, take charge and know that their success is entirely up to them. They know when they're in control and when they're not. And the ways that they can respond most appropriately in those seasons, where things might be chaotic or out of control. A factor of that South Pole, Expedition Amundson and Scott's teams were on was what happened for them both mentally when they were leading their teams in the challenge to get to the South Pole. So and since team made it there, and then their mission became, we need to go back and tell the Norwegian King about our expedition and how we succeeded. And that purpose and mission drove the rest of their Expedition. And like I said, they hit all their deadlines, and they made it back to their supply depot on time, so that they didn't starve so that they didn't freeze so that they could continue their journey home and share their passion for what they had discovered. And that's a key component of the way that leaders can look for opportunity, right? We've been talking a lot about meaning making and difference makers and how they focus on purpose and passion and commitment to greater values or goals in their journeys. And that's something that Amundsen was doing. He was traveling with that with that mindset, where as Scott got there, got the letter. That common sense team had been there 34 days before his team and went back with that mentality of we didn't accomplish this. The mission is over. We failed. What's left, right, and that can impact every decision from that point forward. A great leader even in the face of adversity will find those moments to inspire the team and themselves. towards what's greater, that greater mission that greater purpose. So I serve on a board for a nonprofit in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles. It's called Food Ed. And Kristen, the founder and director called me to ask me to be a founding board member back in February of 2020. And she got the paperwork, finalizing the status of food EAD as a 501, c three nonprofit in March of 2020. Like days before locked down. And I think back to that moment for her of That's bad luck, right? Like that's really unlucky that you found this nonprofit, get the paperwork days before the entire world shuts down. And here's where she saw opportunity. Instead of saying that's really unlucky, she began to re strategize to come up with contingency plans to get super creative in the ways that she thought about the mission and the purpose of food ed. So the purpose of food aid is food and garden education, and discovery with kids in K through 12. schools, and schools were being shut down. And so she started thinking about outdoor classroom space, and how when the lockdown ended, how that could look different for students, and staff and faculty. And one thing led to another and food Ed has continuously hit all of those goals from the first year. They've grown threefold, the team has grown, the board has grown. And I think about what Kristin could have done. In those moments of feeling like everything around me, all of the external factors that are swirling, are too much. And she could have said, we haven't totally started yet. I'll admit defeat, I'll move on. But instead, she was a leader who showed up with tenacity and creativity and understood that there was a way to make this work. Jim Collins calls this empirical creativity when a leader is able to look to other people on conventional wisdom and gather the stories of those around them, and then rely on observation and experimentation and evidence that's in front of you to make more creative moves in the future, but with a sound empirical base. And that's where I think leaders who are lucky not only identify opportunities for empirical creativity, but they integrate empirical creativity into the rhythms of their leadership so that it becomes a part of how they think and how they strategize. They're constantly looking at everything that's in front of them. Always with that lens of innovation and creativity and thinking of what could be better what could be more, how can I refine this? I have a friend who I've mentioned here on the podcast before who constantly talks about being a refiner, and that nothing should ever be good enough, you should always be in on one iteration, thinking about how you can move to the next. And that is something that I truly believe makes a really wise leader. Regardless of how long you've been leading in whatever space you're in, a wise leader knows that there is always more to be done. And a way to dig in and have the next iteration that is better. And it's not because you're consistently failing. It's because you're consistently seeing opportunities to blaze a new trail forward to find a new way. And that's where leaders like Ahmanson, who's taken an expedition team to the South Pole, or Kristen, who's launching a nonprofit in the middle of a global pandemic or you a leader who is looking for ways to refine and approach your work differently. And your leadership differently, can lean into opportunity and find your own luck, because it's not really lack. Right? It's being strategic, it's being creative. It's identifying opportunities, and jumping all in for the things that are helping you to push toward and lean into your purpose and your mission and the task that you have in front of you. So while there's no luck in leadership, find opportunities to win this week.