Make Your Own Luck

12 Practical Steps to Taking Smarter Risks in Business

by Eileen Shapiro and Howard Stevenson (14300)

To make your own luck and thereby have better control of your destiny, focus on increasing your “predictive intelligence” — your ability to act in the face of uncertainty to create the future you desire. Predictive intelligence grows when the four-step process is followed:

Orient
Organize
Plan
Act!

Predictive intelligence is not something you’re either born with or you’re not. Rather, predictive intelligence is generated by a set of twelve orient-organize-plan-act! skills that can be improved and enhanced, just like any other business skills.

All our work is based on the premise that every purposive action is a bet; one acts now on the expectation or hope, but not the certainty, or the results that will be achieved in the future. Humans are gambling animals. We all gamble all the time. Every time we act, we invest time, or reputation, or effort, or money with no guarantee that the results we seek, no matter how likely they may seem, will occur as we have planned — or as we will desire when the results occur. Once we’ve placed any of our assets at risk, we’ve placed a bet. No matter what our preferences, none of us can avoid gambling as we live our lives. What we can do is use our Predictive Intelligence to up the odds that over time, the portfolio of bets we place will lead to the kind of future or futures we envision or desire. Then we can go from depending on dumb luck to making our own luck and taking more control over our destinies. The higher your Predictive Intelligence, the more agile and fast you will be at making your own luck by identifying the best bets and then taking action when and while opportunities are available. This is more than being lucky; people with high PI consistently make their own luck; they take whatever circumstances they are in and create bets with the best odds for getting them closer to the outcomes they seek. You can think of Predictive Intelligence as a kind of consistent street smarts applied to a series of goals

–Eileen Shapiro and Howard Stevenson

Make Your Own Luck