I have a quick story about "making your own luck" that should be helpful to a lot of people. It seems small, and it's impossible to say at this point in time how it will affect my life, but I am convinced I was meant to see this:
Two days ago (a Friday night), I called one of my fraternity brothers and asked what he was up to for the evening. He was headed to a small birthday party in Santa Clara, and I decided to come along for the ride since I had nothing better to do. At first, when we arrived, I thought I had made the wrong choice. Everyone already knew each other, and my friend gravitated towards his acquaintances. Despite the best of intentions, my networking efforts were poised to fail miserably. Fortunately, as the party gradually diminished in size and a few drinks helped to grease the social wheels, I saw that all was not lost. I began discussing the latest Lil' Wayne songs and bay area weather, and I became more comfortable as the night drew on. When the time came to leave for the evening, my friend offered to take one of the other guests (who was actually his sister-in-law) back to her hotel. In the car, we talked about our mutual interests in business, and she told us about Ken Blanchard, most famous as author of "The One Minute Manager." Turns out she works at Grand Canyon University, where Blanchard had established an Executive MBA program. At the time, I made a mental note to check out the book since I am always looking for business-related reading material.
The following day, my interest in business writing prompted me to corroborate the woman's story. Lo and behold, Ken Blanchard did write the One Minute Manager, and he has established an Executive MBA at Grand Canyon University. A bit more research revealed to me his underlying principle - being able to summarize goals, praises, and reprimands within one minute each. This is a widely accepted principle in business today, and I found it interesting that he was such an early pioneer of these concepts. I actually recommend Made To Stick, which expounds further upon the concept of one-minute goals.
Then, Sunday night, after hours of meetings and procrastinating, I found myself still awake at 5AM because I still had work to do for the quickly approaching morning. Skimming the TV Guide online, I stumbled across Blanchard's name once again. This being the third time in one weekend, I naturally had to flip over to the local public television station. The program was entitled 'Ken Blanchard - Achieving Your Dreams.' At that point, I knew I had to write this post, but I also have to get as much as I can from Blanchard's experience as I multi-task to put this together.
Now, the useful advice:
- Success is all about joy. If you don't find joy in what you do, you won't be willing to work hard enough to produce world-class results
- Success begins with a vision - what's yours?
- At some point, you have to find a way for people to pay you to do what you love
- Balance is key - use the PACT (Perspective, Autonomy, Connectedness, Tone) model to maintain balance
