What role did luck play a role in your career?

If I look at my career, 50% was luck and the other 50% was hard work.

I was lucky to have joined some great companies with nurturing work cultures and amazing colleagues. I was also very lucky to have multiple very good mentors who gave me the opportunities I would not have had access to otherwise. And when I started my consulting practice in 2001, I was lucky to have a network of past colleagues, who became early clients.

But I also worked hard to make the most of these opportunities, that came my way. I have always been very focused on making my clients or managers successful. As a result, all my clients came from referral business – not a single cold call.  During the journey, I met some clients who pushed me, and I am very thankful for them because I grew significantly from those experiences.  While working with some clients, I was able to expand my practice into areas such as ROI Models to help their customers justify solutions, Monthly Win-loss Analysis, Sales Play books, lead-to-deal flow optimization and competitive analysis and deliver significant value to them and many others.

But one practice I would like to share with everyone in this post is the practice of owning your day/week that I have intensely followed. I attribute a lot of my success to it.  At the beginning of each quarter, I plan for what I want to accomplish for the quarter and for the first month. Then every Sunday I review my monthly plan and then make a list of deliverables for Monday and for the week – not action items, but what I am going to deliver or accomplish. And they need to fit into my monthly goals.  Then every day of the week I start my morning with what I am going to accomplish that day.  This keeps me intensely focused during the day.  I spend a few minutes at the end of the day to see what I accomplished, where I am on my weekly plan and any adjustments I need to make to my pace.  I also reflect on, if anything needs to change in my weekly, monthly, or quarterly plan based on any new developments.  My goal always is to finish everything on my list by mid-day Friday, so I have some buffer built into it.   This practice has become foundational for me and not only allows me to deliver what I promised, but more importantly, continue to grow personally.  Reason is my personal growth goals are a part of my quarterly plan.

What worked for you?  Please share with others by replying to this post.  We all learn from each other.