My Wall Street Journal Earn Your Luck Columns: Art Collector/Industrialist Peter Brant, and Designer Donna Karan
Success, they say, is inspiration plus perspiration. But what of sheer universe-vibration? Holly Peterson asks the most successful people we know to tell us what role luck plays in one’s career.
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
Perhaps my latest Wall Street Journal columns are of interest as you read your papers. I ask our most prominent leaders what role luck played in their ascent. This month:
Peter Brant, a billionaire industrialist and philanthropist with very sad lows and intense highs along the way, talks about the liquidity of art, which most investors and portfolio managers disagree with. Doesn’t hurt that he started collecting his hundreds of blue-chip Warhols and Basquiats in college and his twenties.
Donna Karan, knew from the beginning what working women wanted: to be comfortable and confident at work and go into night events seamlessly from the office. Remember the chic, smart woman in the back of her limo, with a baby in her lap?
My subjects’ answers differ more than their leadership styles: some, such as media powerhouse Barry Diller, believes luck, or serendipity, was the key to his getting positions at the tippy top. Ursula Burns, who motored from intern to CEO at Xerox, believes luck is finding a $100 bill on the sidewalk, but people earn their luck with hard work and team coordination. “You don’t just walk in and get promoted one day.”
I asked her:
What about accidental inventions, like those 3M researchers who inadvertently made adhesive glue that created the first Post-it Notes?
Not luck! Do you have any idea how many years and brutal hours those people worked in the lab to make that so-called mistake?!
Each leader speaks honestly with humor and humility.
Thank you, and please do subscribe to all outlets you devour. Journalists, authors, editors, and publishers rely on your commitment to their essential craft.
Holly