You Need to Be Lucky AND Good
Both are necessary, neither is sufficient
There’s a line about career success I like that I’ve heard a couple of times on sports podcasts from ESPN anchor Scott Van Pelt, which he attributes to legendary former Maryland coach Lefty Driesell. The story is that the two met up sometime after Van Pelt’s broadcast career started going well, and Driesell congratulated him on his success. Van Pelt replied that he’d been very lucky, to which Driesell responded “Nah, if it was just luck, it would’ve run out by now. You’re still around because you’re good.” (I’m paraphrasing, obviously…)
I like that way of thinking about career success, because it includes both of the essential elements: you’re got to be lucky to get started, but sustaining success past that initial opportunity requires talent and hard work. Both are necessary, neither is sufficient.
I was reminded of that line this weekend when catching up on this Bill Simmons podcast episode with Chuck Klosterman. (Obligatory content warning: Both of these guys are Not To All Tastes, but I enjoy them. Also, the lengthy intro about Tom Brady’s career is borderline insufferable, but you can easily skip it.) They have the obligatory sports-guy debate about the relationship between Brady and Bill Belichick, and whether they needed each other or they would’ve been successful apart. This includes a whole lot of stuff about Brady’s work ethic and competitive drive and all that sort of thing, which is entirely predictable.
What doesn’t get brought up, somewhat surprisingly because it seems like it would be right up Klosterman’s alley, is the role of luck. Specifically, that Brady got his chance to shine thanks largely to a freakish injury to Drew Bledsoe at the start of the 2001 season. Bledsoe had taken the team to the Super Bowl in 1996, and had just signed a massive contract with the Patriots, so it’s hard to believe that, absent the injury, Brady would’ve gotten on the field that year. He was also fortunate to have Belichick, one of the least sentimental coaches in NFL history, running the team— lots of other coaches would’ve gone back to Bledsoe as soon as he was cleared in Week 11. Brady was solid but not clearly an all-time great in those games, and the Pats had a lot of money invested in Bledsoe.
Without that solid season and the storybook run through the playoffs to upset the Rams in the Super Bowl, Brady isn’t Tom Brady. And that start owed an awful lot to luck.
At the same time, the continued success Brady and the Patriots had, particularly in the second half of his career, would’ve been impossible without all those personal characteristics that Simmons and Klosterman go on about: the talent, the work ethic, the borderline psychopathic competitiveness, all that stuff. Both are necessary, neither is sufficient.
Like so many other things these days, discourse around career success goes off the rails in two diametrically opposite directions. On the one hand, you have people who insist that it’s all personal talent and hard work, that people like Brady have a kind of essential character that means they’ll achieve greatness no matter what. On the other, there are people who insist that absolutely everything is luck, or more insidiously various types of privilege, networking, etc.
In the case of Brady, both of those positions kind of beggar belief. It’s hard to imagine that, without the opening provided by Bledsoe’s injury and the support of Beleichick and the Patriots organization, he would’ve definitely been that successful. But it’s equally hard to believe that he would’ve gone on to the success that he did without some pretty remarkable personal qualities, as opposed to being yet another flash-in-the-pan backup who had a good run for a short time but couldn’t keep it up— a Matt Cassel, say, to choose an example not all that randomly.
The really thorny problem here comes in when you need to offer advice to people who are at the start of their career, because both of the extreme positions lead nowhere good. Saying that everything is about hard work and personal talent, neglecting the essential role of luck, is a recipe for burnout and disillusionment among those who aren’t lucky. On the other hand, saying that everything is down to luck and privilege, neglecting the essential role of personal qualities, is a recipe for a kind of poisonous cynicism that denies and devalues the success of others.
Both luck and hard work are necessary to career success, neither luck nor hard work is sufficient to ensure success. In the context of giving advice, things are necessarily going to skew a bit toward the hard work side, because that’s the only part that an individual can actually control, but it’s important to temper that with reminders that luck also plays a role. It’s a tricky balance to get right.
And that’s why I end up liking the Driesell formulation. Luck is important, but luck runs out. It can get you in the door, but to stick around, let alone open the next door, you also need to be good.
That’s your careerist moment for the day, though I guess I could round it out with a reminder to buy my book (available in both the US and UK). Here are the usual buttons:
And if you want to complain about my taste in podcasts, the comments will be open.