SHORTS | Can You Make Your Own Luck? with Andy Lightfoot

I used to ask this all the time in the podcast, but I've not asked it for a long time. And then after this, maybe we'll get back to some of the questions I thought I'd ask you. But when we was talking about sort of our generation getting the job, sticking it out, working hard, trying to get the promotion, you said with a bit of luck, you might get that promotion. I always used to ask guests on the show about luck. So in terms of career progression, do you think you personally have been lucky? Do you believe in luck? Or are you more of the mindset that we make our own luck?

The former. I mean, do I believe in luck? I feel is going down another line of questioning, but, you know, just in the world. Yeah, yeah.

It's slightly philosophical.

Yes, I've been incredibly lucky because I think to get to the senior position, certainly to become a CEO, there's a huge amount of luck involved. I'd genuinely be surprised if anyone said any different, because you have to be good, right? So I'm not taking away. You have to have talent, you have to have vision, you have to have all the requisite skills, but so do 10 other people. And so how do you become the one out of that 10? And there's a huge amount of sort of right place, right time, right sponsor. So if I look at that progression, for me, there were a whole myriad of sliding doors moments. It wasn't one thing where it could have gone either way. It's probably a culmination of four or five things that had to fall in a very definitive direction for me to get this role. And I was promoted within a company. So I was global Digital Director, promoted to chief executive. And I think that's quite an unusual progression. I think there's a few more of those happening now. But this was nearly six years ago that that happened and certainly wasn't really a well trodden progression path.

I guess more traditionally it's finance chief operating officer, chief commercial officer. Right?

Yeah. And I think often sideways, I think often you get that promotion side, which again, has a huge amount of luck to it. But, you know, the previous chief executive was retiring. The business was going through a significant transformation. There was a significant external event that was sort of driving a complete rethink within the board. So all of these things just had to come together for it to work out for me. Now I'm not going to downplay the skills that I brought to the role or the role that I've done or the, the performance that I've driven But that was all allowed because of luck. And had it gone to open CVs and people been interviewed because they didn't go through that process, I was, I was sort of championed into the role. Would I have got the role against nine other candidates who had all been CEOs for three, four, five years previously and proven that they could run this role? I doubt that I would. Certainly, if I was the hiring manager, I would have looked at my CV with less conviction than people that had been there and done it. So, yes, significant amount of luck.

And without turning this into a court case or an argument where I'm trying to get you to change your view at the same time, how much do you think comes down to sort of putting yourself in the time and place where you can be lucky, about putting yourself in the place where those lucky in inverted commas opportunities present themselves to you? And the reason I kind of partly asked that is when I heard General David Petraeus on the podcast, he said luck is where preparedness meets opportunity, which I liked. And I don't think this is a black or white distinction. Right. It's not kind of you make your own luck or you're lucky. It's definitely a combination of the two. But I'm just always intrigued to explore how people go about making themselves lucky, if that makes sense. I think I agree with that.

I think that's a really, really succinct way of putting it, is that you know, when that opportunity arises, let's say that happens once in your life, are you ready to take it? And I think that's what that gets to the none of it. You still need that one opportunity to come along. You still need to be in the right place at the right time. But if you're in the right place at the right time, but you're not ready, you know, you haven't developed yourself enough, you haven't proven enough in the roles that you've had, you haven't developed your leadership skills and your leadership styles sufficiently. You haven't put your head above the parapet sufficiently to be seen. And if you haven't done all those things that you're going to miss that chance, it's going to pass you by. So that's why I say, I think, you know, you have to have all of those things. That's, that's a given. I still think you need that moment to come along. And yes, there are ways that you can make it, make it happen for yourself or you can increase the probability. You know, you're far more likely to become CEO operating in small organizations than you are sitting in big organizations. Right. If I'd stayed in Amazon, I would definitively not be chief executive. So by leaving and making what at the time was a very brave decision of this huge, enormously successful company, I was very well thought of. There I was, I was being championed for sort of a fast track career. But I made the decision to leave because what I saw was exactly what you talk about, just this forever career within Amazon, working at, yes, ever more senior levels, but as a slightly bigger cog in an ever bigger machine, as opposed to trying to define something. I had a very clear plan of my career from an early age and I stuck to it even when I missed the milestones. So I wanted to be a director at the age of 30, which I didn't achieve. And I wanted to be a chief executive by the age of 40, which I did. I was 37 when I became chief executive. So when I didn't achieve that 30, I think it's easy to go, okay, well, I've missed that. So I've got to reset all my priorities or I've got to come up with new. And I didn't, I stuck to it and I was just, I was in arrears. So how am I going to, what am I going to do to get to that director level? What, what is it going to take for me to get. Rather than moving the goalposts, moving it out and resetting expectations. But what I'd add to that, actually it was when I relaxed a bit about it that I really progressed the most. So when I was super ambitious and super hungry for promotions, I wasn't getting them. You know, you could smell the desperation. It was actually when I chilled out a little bit, when I relaxed into the role. And some of that was with life stage, with having children and different life stages, where you go from having a single goal in life, single objective, to having to have a more balanced work life. Some of it was maturity, just getting a bit older, but some of it was just actually just somewhere within me. It was just a little bit less important, but it was always my goal. I never let go of that.