“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunities” When asked why I like working for netlogx, this saying first came to mind. As I read further about the origins of this quote, the most relevant work was done by Psychologist Richard Wiseman. Richard Wiseman studied hundreds of peoples over the course of 10 years and his conclusion was that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles:

  1. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities
  2. Make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition
  3. Create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations
  4. Adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good

The fit of these four principles to my six years of experience at netlogx lined up surprisingly well. netlogx was started because someone, Audrey Taylor, noticed an opportunity, listened to her intuition, took a chance and with a positive and resilient attitude continued this practice of generating “luck” year after year. Twenty years later, netlogx was awarded a best place to work in Indiana for the past four years in a row.

As I think about the netlogx projects I have been part of, one project stands out as a favorite. This project has been my role as a program manager for the construction of a new state mental health hospital. The opportunity to learn and work with a group of people that truly care about mental health in the state of Indiana is what makes this my favorite project. Some of the countless new concepts and facts about building a new mental health facility I have learned are listed below:

  • Patient safety is a number one priority
  • Providing an environment to more quickly stabilize and improve patient mental health is a number one priority
  • Safety of the construction workers is a number one priority
  • Construction project managers are extremely organized and detail oriented
  • The financial impact of canned pineapple
  • The financial impact of how many roles of toilet paper are used in a day
  • To be admitted as an adult patient at a state hospital, a judge must issue a commitment order
  • State mental health staff take care of patients because they truly care; they could easily make more money at a non-state hospital
  • Staff can never have enough storage and meeting space
  • The number of 53 – foot semi-trailers full of furniture than can be off-loaded on a dock in a day
  • Patient admission, assessment, treatment and discharge in mental health versus acute care facilities

I could keep going for pages, but how did luck result in working on my favorite project?

A peer of mine met the first criteria of being skilled at noticing chance opportunities. Through a casual conversation about work going on during the early phases of the hospital, a comment was made that the mental health hospital could really use someone experienced in hospital operations. My peer remembered having worked with me at another hospital. He followed the second luck criteria by trusting his intuition and introduced netlogx to the mental health hospital leadership team. With his and my background in building out new hospitals and systems, we began work on the mental health hospital.

However, our experiences were in acute care hospital systems. But having a background in working with physicians, nurses, similar healthcare systems and processes, we were positive that we could bring value to the project.

Meeting the third and fourth luck criteria, with a resilient attitude, that if we didn’t know the answer, we had faith that we had the background and connections in the healthcare field to find the answer.

So, was it luck that I had the opportunity to work on the build out of a new mental health hospital?

Yes, it was lucky that I had years of prior successful experiences working in other hospital systems and a peer remembered my work.

Yes, it was luck that I have peers that were skilled in identifying opportunities to create and identify a chance opportunity based upon a simple conversation.

Yes, it was luck that I followed my intuition to work for netlogx, a company that for the past 20 years has encouraged and demonstrated by example, that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunities.