Management Scholars Academy

Today’s post is from Lakshminarasimhan, PMP. Narasimhan is a Project manager with HCL  and has been with HCL for 9 years. Prior to that he was with CMC Limited, Hyderabad for 4 years, learning Telugu and Hindi along with other computer languages.

I was reading a book, “Goal II, Its not Luck”  By Eliyahu Goldratt and wondering how true it could be.  Just then I received a mail from one of the senior managers in HCL with the subject “Are you lucky?”.  Surprised by the coincidence and the commanality between the two, I could not control myself talking to some one about this. Where will I get people who would listen? Realized that the perfect place is Mr.Ganapathy’s MS Academy blog (who has been asking for a guest blog) and here it is.

In the mail that I received from the senior manager, it was the research results from one Dr.Richard Wiseman that were shared.  When you find time visit his site [Or I would even say - Visit this by finding sometime] and many interesting findings from his researches are listed.  According to his research on lucky people, Wisemen found people are lucky or unlucky by what they do with their attitude and not by any other external factors.  By the end of his research on luck, he could turn lucky people luckier and unlucky people to somewhat lucky, proving luck can be developed.

The kind of experiments he did are like this. He gave a set of people a printed  paper and find out how many photos were there on it. This paper also contained a large message “Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50”.  Those who felt lucky found the message more that those who feel unlucky. At the end of his research Dr.Wiseman has provided set of tips to become more lucky. Some of them are here , more on his book.
1. Listen to your gut instincts – they are normally right
2. Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine
3. Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well
4. Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call

Eliyahu on the other hand has depicted methods to achieve your goals in a methodical manner and not to wait for luck to strike. I still have a finish the book. Once I do I will share them here. Till then, bring in the important factors to be lucky all the time.

Related posts:

1. Guest Post – Lisa Wright shares a word on morals
2. What would be your message to management students?