Doug Cartland's Four-Minute Leadership Advisory
Luck   
Doug Cartland
Doug Cartland, Inc.
03/08/2016

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You've heard quipped the phrase, "It's better to be lucky than good."
Question: Is it?
In November 1868 General George Custer was bearing down on a Cheyenne Village near the Washita River in what is now western Oklahoma.
The strategy he chose against his enemy is detailed in the brilliant book, Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne: Custer divided his force, then advanced over unknown terrain against an enemy of unknown strength, and executed a "double envelopment," a maneuver that required overwhelming superiority in numbers. All of this against the advice of his Indian scouts.
The Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle had also made the mistake of not believing his scouts either so the village was not prepared for the dawn attack. Custer and his men rampaged through the surprised village killing indiscriminately; he killed only eleven warriors-the rest of his victims were old men, women and children. Then he had his men burn the encampment to the ground.
So Custer won.
According to Gwynne, what Custer didn't know was that, "Just below Black Kettle's camp, stretching for fifteen miles along the river, was the entire winter encampment of the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes." (Italics his)
This huge array of Indian hostiles just down the stream from Black Kettle's village was discovered when one of Custer's platoons had gone to chase some escaped horses during the raid. Had these Indians stirred just moments earlier they would have engulfed and destroyed Custer and his raiders. As it was, they showed up just as Custer and his men were retreating.
Gwynne put it thusly (Insertion mine, italics his): "Custer had come perilously close to confronting what would have been perhaps the largest group of hostile Indians ever assembled in one place. Later [and pay attention here] he would actually face the largest group of hostile Indians ever assembled in one place, and he would not be so lucky."
That would be at a place called Little Bighorn.
In June 1876, in eastern Montana territory near the Little Bighorn River, eight years after his lucky win over the Cheyenne, Custer would employ the exact same strategy against the Sioux, again clueless to the buzz saw he was running into. He would once more not listen to the advice of his Indian scouts. And this time he and virtually all of his men were slaughtered.
As beneficial as it initially is, luck can be a dangerous thing. Too often it emboldens the foolish and enables the overconfident and the lazy.
When they get lucky once some tend to assume they'll get lucky again. That in itself is an irrational thought because luck by its very definition promises a result of chance not prediction. It can't be counted on.
Luck is a nice short-term reprieve, it might buy us some time, but it does us few long-term favors.
It's better, I think, to look at a lucky happenstance as a failure. If we treat it as a failure, then like after any failure we can debrief it as such, learn and plan better for next time.
Then we won't need luck.
Indeed, if we don't learn the lessons of luck then it will eventually run out. And when it turns, it's ruthless.
Ask Custer.
All of us have had potentially perilous and lucky moments that, if things had gone the other way, could have caused real harm to us or others. We had them as kids, maybe we've had them in a car.
Typically, we come out of those situations scared stiff and determined not to put ourselves in that situation again.
That same apprehension should prevail in business.
Luck relied upon is bad luck waiting to happen.
So is it better to be lucky?

Nah, it's much better to be good.
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Sincerely,  

Doug

 

Doug Cartland, President
Doug Cartland, Inc.

 

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