Earn Your Luck: Ursula Burns from intern to CEO
My new monthly WSJ column about the relationship between hard work and luck.
When you look back at your career at this juncture, do you see strokes of luck here and there, or simple grinding hard work? There’s no correct or humble answer. Maybe you believe one chance meeting at a bar led to where you stand now. Steve Jobs credits a font class in college with pretty much everything that followed at Apple.
Others believe there’s no such thing as luck on the job: you put yourself in situations to Earn Your Luck. Or your drive and experience allow you to better recognize luck when it comes your way and you seize it.
Either way, Ursula Burns, legendary CEO of Xerox, doesn’t believe luck exists on the job: you don’t walk into a room, and they hire you. Even an actor on an audition walks in prepared to impress.
Read the first installment of Earn Your Luck at the Wall Street Journal: