Some years ago, in a survey done by Ernst and Young, successful entrepreneurs were asked to rate the key factors that they felt had made them successful. Out of the 22 factors surveyed, “luck” was rated 22 out of 22. Yet, the entrepreneurs had all had moments of luck in their past. The sentiment is obvious: we all have the same amount of luck; some just do more about it.

You can view this in two ways. Firstly, I think that the point about taking action when opportunity (“luck”) appears is critical. I’m not going to focus on this point in this week’s thought, though.

Rather, I want to unpack the second way to view this. And that is by focusing on creating opportunity. The formula is quite simple: the more opportunities multiplied by the diversity of those opportunities determines the probability of luck. Let’s unpack that a little more using an example.

If attending business networking events is your method of creating opportunity, then the more events you attend the higher the likelihood of creating opportunity. If you vary the type of event you attend (diversity) by attending other types of functions such as wine tasting or pottery classes then you also increase the likelihood of creating opportunity. Diversity brings in fresh ideas and new people with those ideas. I’m sure you understand what I’m talking about if you go to similar functions and see the same people at every function.