Success is sometimes accidental.

"Sometimes, success is a total accident."  When I heard someone repeat this, I was a little taken by surprised.  "What's he talking about?" I thought as he went on to explain.  It comes down to the idea that sometimes, we find success by accident.  

This doesn't mean that we should go through life without a plan or hoping to stumble upon success, but rather that we should always analyze the situation, be it success or failure, and ensure that we are learning from it.  There is no rule that we can only learn from our failures, only our own ignorance that causes us to think successes must be a result of only our intentional efforts.

When we succeed, it is sometimes due to factors we do not suspect.  Regardless, we should always look to the experience and learn from it.  Relationships might succeed because of our partner's traits rather than our own.  Business ventures might succeed thanks to an unforseen competitive advantage rather than our "better mousetrap." A team might win because the other team drops a pass.  A business might succeed because an employee is superb, even thought the manager is terrible.

It doesn't matter what causes the success.  What matters is that we identify what causes that success or negates our failures and learn from that.  I'm reminded of McDonald's introduction of the Filet-O-Fish sandwich.  This sandwich is one of McDonald's top sellers by accident because someone figured out that Catholics need a no meat alternative on Fridays.  

The best way to get skinny is to find what skinny people do and do more of that.  The best way to be wealthy is to find out what wealthy people do and do more of that.  Find out what makes something successful and do more of that!

The point is, if you can determine what causes it, always learn from failure.  Always learn from success.  Keep learning.  KEEP THINKING!!!

For Love or Money

This is a question that most of us wrestle with at some point in our lives.  Do we look for the position with the better pay, the better chance for advancement, better chance to learn the industry, or do we try to find a happy medium of those things.  

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to learn from a few people who I would consider very successful in their careers and one common theme kept coming up.  Many times before I'd heard, "Don't do it for the money," or "Find what you love, not what pays the best," but this time it was different!  Maybe it's getting older.  Call it living experience.  Whatever.  This time what I heard was put best by Leigh Davis, a successful manager in Southern Company's real estate division.  She said, "Don't chase a dollar, chase an experience."

Life forces us to choose...or so we think.  Richard Murray, Group President of RBC Bank in Alabama and Florida said, "Don't look for a chance to make money, look for a chance to learn something."  I'd always thought of it as a tradeoff: if you want to be successful, you have to always start with the higher salary/best opportunity for a promotion.  Now, several years into my career, I realize that it's much more important to keep learning.  

My challenge is just that.  Chase an experience.  Learn something.  KEEP THINKING!!!

KEEP THINKING!!! That's the challenge. When we finish our 

"formal education," what do we do with it? Yesterday a young 

man told me that he was working 2 jobs to put himself through 

college with only the purpose in mind of getting that heralded 

piece of paper. While that piece of paper might get your 

resume on the desk of a potential employer, it really only 

shows that you have the ability and discipline to learn.  

Our challenge is to continue learning. I'm afraid our 

educational system rewards memorization when it should be 

concerned with teaching people to think. Push your 

people to think. If you find someone who can think, hang

on to them.