Facebook is one of the most well-known companies around right now. Its stock has boomed, turning its founders and staff into billionaires and millionaires. I even read about a man who was given stock to paint a mural at the Facebook office, and several years later, that stock has made him a millionaire. I wonder what it would have been like if Mark Zuckerberg approached you in your Harvard dorm room, and said, “Hey, I’m working on a website, wanna help?”
This would definitely have been a “right place at the right time” situation. Being at the right place at the right time is something that is largely out of our control, but there are things we can do to maximize our chances of being there.
This would definitely have been a “right place at the right time” situation. Being at the right place at the right time is something that is largely out of our control, but there are things we can do to maximize our chances of being there.
Positioning Yourself to be in the
Right Place at the Right Time
1. Be Strategic. If you work in the warehouse of a company and you want to be an office manager, figure out what you need to do to do to accomplish that. Is it education? Experience? Networking with the right people?
If you strategically identify ways you need to grow and then put in the effort to do it, you are making yourself the ideal candidate for that office manager position. This won’t necessarily speed up the “right time” to that next promotion, but it will help you be positioned in the “right place” for when that time does come.
2. Be Excellent. If Zuckerberg wanted to recruit a classmate to help him with Facebook, he wouldn’t have just chosen some random guy or girl. He would have either chosen someone who he knew was great at what they did or a buddy. You can’t always control who your friends are or which of them will be successful (the ones you can control you meet when you’re being strategic), but what you can control is how good you are at something.
When you excel at something, you increase the likelihood that you’ll have your right place/right time moment. I’ve written about becoming distinct in your field before (Read it here).
3. Be Willing. Mark Zuckerberg and several of his Facebook colleagues dropped out of Harvard to pursue this Web site full-time; this risk has paid off handsomely for all of them. However, there was a co-founder named Joe Green, who decided to stay at Harvard. This choice cost him around $400 million dollars (Now, Joe has done pretty well for himself since then, but not $400 million well.).
If the opportunity comes, you need to be willing to jump. Sometimes it involves a risk, but with risk comes reward. This willingness to take the leap doesn’t fit all situations. Keep your family first, keep your values first, keep God first, but if everything lines up, jump and don’t look back.
4. Be Content. This is the hard one when it comes to dreaming about being in the “right place and the right time,” because that thinking always asks “What’s next?” instead of “What am I doing now?” If you’re failing at your present situation, then why should that Fortune 500 company hire you?
Where are you in your life journey? What will your next big step look like? Are you in the right place when that right time comes?
