Aware of luck

This story is related to luck. Its message is that, being aware of luck is much more important than to have luck. In fact, think about luck, like if it were the cards that you have at the beginning of a game. You could have some advantages for the coming steps; but surely, different people with the same cards can have very different results throughout the game. In fact, we can manage our luck, when we are aware of it.

Luck is something that we often underestimate when we are successful and, on the contrary, when we are not, we use in abundance.

In the early stages of my career, when I made small presentations to my team about success in our business, I always included at the end of my formulas a small epsilon representing the idea of luck.

Most of the time, it turns out to be true. In most cases, either in war, in business life or in personal life, there is always a differentiating impact of something that we consider as unmanageable, my small epsilon, in fact representing luck.

What I understood after the years, is a different reality. The impact of this small epsilon, “The ups and downs of our success”, is totally in our hands. It is NOT unmanageable.

The important idea I want to transmit today is that the point is not to HAVE luck, but to be AWARE of luck.

Luck happens for everyone. You just need to see it, you should feel it, you should catch it. Some people can do this more easily. For some, it might be more difficult, but still possible after good or bad experiences. And others might never be able to do it.

There is a special professional experience that come up when I think about the idea of “being aware of luck”: the business story of Beko Spain at the beginning of last crisis years.

In 2009, I was international Managing Director of a Turkish Company, responsible of 12 subsidiaries including 2 in Spain: Beko Spain and Grundig Spain. The time was special. We were in the worst time of the economic crisis, and we were losing a lot of money in both subsidiaries. I was sent from the headquarters to Barcelona to find a proper way to cut the problem. Before coming, all the emergency plan was prepared.

Many companies found themselves in the same kind of situation at that time. After the first weeks, we understood that the crisis was very important, as the predictions pointed that it would continue for some more years. But we thought that the big dangers for us and also for many of other companies could be also a big advantage. This was our luck.

We merged these two companies, Beko and Grundig, and built a new sales team with a different sales strategy.

The market was financially weak. The retailers needed suppliers who trusted that the retailers would not go bankrupt after sending them products. In fact, the suppliers who had good products, with competitive prices, who gave flexible financial solutions, could change this bad luck to an important advantage.

We used the competitivity of our products with the new sales strategy to differentiate ourselves in the market. We analysed carefully the financial strengths of retailers; and with selected ones, we built fair businesses, with flexible financial conditions.

Our negative trend changed quickly.

The message of this story is that this luck or opportunity was in fact perceptible by any manufacturer in the sector, not only by Beko. But only Beko managed to catch this opportunity.

At the beginning of the story, in 2009, Beko brand was at the 23rd position in its sector ranking. Since 2015, Beko moved up to the 3rd position, and the group Beko – Grundig is currently close to the 2nd one. In Spain, Beko and Grundig are now profitable and the quickest growing brands for many years.