The Coincidence Factor

by David G. Jensen, Search Masters International

One of the first things you learn when you write and speak to scientists or engineers is that you'd better carry a lot of information around with you. I've found that technical people, who generally have an analytical nature, like to hear about facts and figures. They prefer their career ideas presented like the result of an experiment at the bench. And whenever I stray into the ether and discuss career concepts that aren't rooted in terra firma, my audience brings me back to earth.

Well, it may seem I'm straying from familiar ground a little with this one. For the first time in my writing career, I'm departing from the usual topics of personal development and leadership skills and exploring some less-charted territory. If you enjoy this departure from my usual fare, perhaps we can make it a regular feature of this site.

I believe that career success comes from sound technical exposure combined with the wisdom that comes from listening to an occasional dream. I've found that small coincidences and unplanned events have been at the core of my own success more often than I'd like to admit (because I'm an analytical sort, just like most readers!).

Coincidences Can Enrich Your Life and Career

Like many of you, I've had some wonderful advantages in my life because I picked up on a coincidence and followed its lead. I met my spouse (my business partner) that way -- by being in a place where logic said I shouldn't have been, doing something that I wouldn't normally have done, and being open for anything to happen. Twenty-three years later, we both admit that it worked. On the other hand, I can also recall being incredibly blind to coincidence, even when it seemed that someone or something was trying to hit me over the head with a baseball bat.

Several years ago, on a plane returning from a conference I noticed that the passenger next to me was reading an issue of "Pharmaceutical Executive Magazine." I usually go to any lengths to avoid conversations with chatty fellow passengers on cross-country flights. As it turned out, this wasn't a fellow conventioneer, but a senior vice president of a major pharmaceutical company who was returning from Washington, DC, where he had attended a PMA meeting. He told me a little about himself (an outstanding professional contact for me) and a great deal about his current love and area of interest -- the study of pharmacoeconomics. It was a lecture on the subject you couldn't buy at any university, delivered by a successful executive with a passion for the subject. But I didn't pay attention.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I could have taken two directions after that chance meeting. I could have studied the booming field of pharmacoeconomics, learned to understand its role in my industry, and positioned my practice as a leader in profess ional recruitment for this hot niche. Unfortunately, that isn't the direction I chose. Instead, I asked him for his card and took the usual headhunter approach, adding another contact to my database. The significance of this coincidence went right over my head, but it became very clear a year later when I lost a major income opportunity. I missed the chance to work with a leading biotechnology company when it was obvious to them from my presentation that I didn't know the first thing about pharmacoeconomics. In "The Celestine Prophecy," best-selling author James Redfield describes a number of insights that he predicts may have an impact on us in the future as we become more aware of how human beings are connected to each other through coincidence. He asks his readers, "Have you ever had a hunch or intuition concerning something that you've wanted to do? Some course you wanted to take in your life? And wondered how it might happen? And then, after you had half forgotten about it and focused on other things, you suddenly met someone or read something or went somewhere that led to the very opportunity you envisioned?" Redfield's advice: Pay attention. Become conscious of the coincidences in your life.

Paying Attention Can Make A Difference in the World of Science

In 15 years of recruiting work, I've interviewed more than 6,000 people in depth about their ambitions, their experience, and their ideas about what has made them successful. It is essential that I know the candidates with whom I am working on assignment for a client company. It is also a fascinating study. I truly enjoy writing about success.

It's odd, though, how two people with similar training and experience can end up in dramatically different career positions. Obviously, success depends equally on the choices people make and on their attitude and spirit. But this equation for success is always missing something if you figure in only talent, attitude, and choices. Lately I've started to believe that what's missing is how well we pay attention to those clues that show themselves all around us. Coincidence.

Here's how two people I know account for their career success. I have changed their names and a significant number of their circumstances so that my reasons for describing them will be evident, but their identities will not.

John is on a combination science/business track as an applications lab supervisor for an instrument company. He was trained under a mentor with a world-class reputation, one of the best-known professors of bioanalytical chemistry in the country. This professor's students typically enter industry or academia with several job offers and are the pick of the litter by companies like Merck, Pfizer, and Genentech. Bob works for the same company as a director of marketing. He graduated at roughly the same time as John, from a far less stellar laboratory but with the same Ph.D. in biochemistry. He was originally hired in a technical capacity, so his training focused on areas of interest to his employer. He worked with John in applications support for the first two years of his industrial work life. But five years later, Bob is in the senior ranks of the company, and the annual salary difference between them is almost $50,000. I compared my notes on how John and Bob described the reasons for their success. John's comments are rooted in his analytical and scientific approach. Bob paints his success as a result of internal strengths (his training), the people around him (his team attitude), and circumstances (some of them sheer coincidence).

John's top three reasons for career success:

1. Solid technical training in biochemistry from [the mentor mentioned above] 
2. A strong publications record 
3. A creative approach and broad understanding of [a separations science technique]

Bob's top three reasons for career success:

1. Strong training in science and business 
2. Choosing the right people to work with 
3. Being in the right place at the right time

I like Bob's response about choosing the right people to work with. In my past work, I've written a great deal about the benefits of an interdependent team approach. Real as those benefits might be, however, Bob's statement could still be considered a canned interview response. Bob's last reason, being in the right place at the right time, is a bit unusual. Applicants are usually too busy trying to get the spotlight on themselves to think about throwing it elsewhere.

But it's this last answer that begs for more. As I spent more time with Bob, I learned how in several situations throughout his career he was caught up in some unique circumstance or coincidence. Instead of allowing those lessons to go over his head, Bob paid close attention, and his career moved forward as a result.

It was pure coincidence that Bob found himself on the same team as the vice president of marketing and sales at a company golf outing. He used this coincidence to plant a few seeds, sharing his career interests with the fellow. At the same time he learned about an upcoming job opening in that department. It was posted throughout the company, and he would have heard about it anyway, but he had an inside track on the job because he knew what the VP wanted out of that position. As I listened to Bob, I agreed with him that he had been in more than one right place at the right time. I also agreed with others in his organization who admire him a great deal for his talent and people skills (and who also believe that he is a very lucky person).

An ancient Babylonian proverb applies here, "If a man be lucky, there is no foretelling the possible extent of his good fortune. Pitch him into the Euphrates and like as not he will swim out with a pearl in his hand."

As I consider the people I've met over the years who have been lucky in their career endeavors, I believe that much of their luck has to do with their ability to harvest pearls from the coincidences in their lives.

Author:

Dave Jensen
500 Foothills South, Suite 2
Sedona, AZ 86336 

To reach Search Masters International, contact
career@searchmastersinternational.com
(630) 663-9140 

Contact the author for reprint permission:
david_g_jensen@yahoo.com 

References:
(1) James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy (Satori Publishing, Hoover, AL, 1993).

(2) George Clason, The Richest Man in Babylon (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1955).

 

 

© Copyright 2000 by David G. Jensen, Sedona, AZ 86336-5085. Contact the author for reprint permission.