Musings from the CU Suite

Written by Anthony Demangone

You've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya punk?

    - Harry Callahan, played by Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry

JCPenney recently sacked Ron Johnson after only 18 months on the job.  He was brought in with trumpets and streamers after his work at Apple.  But things simply went from bad to worse. 

Daniel Gross wrote a nice piece (The Daily Beast) that puts it into perspective.  Here's what really caught my eye.

Sometimes people prosper and thrive because they happened to be at the right place at the right time. That’s not to say Johnson wasn’t a smart retail mind, or that anybody could have done what he did with Apple. Rather, a big chunk of his success may have lain in having the good fortune to run Apple’s retail chain in a period when the company’s designers and engineers were cranking out a series of world-beating, irresistible products. And that wasn’t a skill Johnson could easily transfer to a listing middle-market department store chain.

It gets you thinking.  How much of any one person's success is driven by luck?  How much of my success is driven by forces and variables outside of my control? 

I don't know if there's an easy way to answer that question, but I bet the answer would shock you.

Thoughts?

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You might be interested in the following:

• Was Steve Jobs lucky, successful, or both? (Musings)