Category Archives: Managing Your Career

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Luck be a Lady

by DoctrineMan!!

They call you lady luck,
But there is room for doubt,
At times you have a very un-lady-like way
Of running out.

– Frank Sinatra in “Luck be a Lady”

In his recent post on the influence of luck on a career, Army officer and editor of The Military Leader Drew Steadman offers a somewhat light-hearted perspective on chance and success. Why are some people so lucky while others seem to slog along professionally? Where do you draw the line between luck and talent? What are the limits to luck in a successful career? How do you create your own luck?

Luck can be a fickle creature. As Frank Sinatra sang in “Luck be a Lady,” it has a tendency to run out when you least expect it. Depend on luck too much, and you’ll find yourself on the hard-luck side of the professional craps table, staring down dice that never seem to roll your way. On the other hand, carefully cultivated luck can do much to keep your career on a winning trajectory.

luck

Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer, 1865. Photo on Wikipedia.
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Proactive Luck

by Nathan Finney

Recently, Drew Steadman posted a thought-provoking piece on the large role luck plays in a military career. His four points are all worth pondering, but I find the last one, “Create an environment for luck,” the most compelling…or at least the item that came to my mind during our internal discussions on this topic.

Build for your team a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another
and of strength to be derived by unity. – Vince Lombardi

luck

Carnage like this followed the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991, where luck coupled with the lethality of E Troop, 2d ACR, commanded by then Captain HR McMaster. McMaster’s tactical success garnered strategic visibility that would follow him his entire career.
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The Role of Luck in Becoming a Successful Officer

If…

…you were born into 0.4% of the US population
…you avoided serious criminal offenses as an adolescent
…you can do push ups, sit ups, and run
…you stumbled upon worthwhile mentors who taught you the basics of leadership
…you were placed in a branch that at least mildly aligned with your passions
…you didn’t get a course-ending case of cellulitis in Ranger School
…you got orders to a unit with a legitimate operational future, where you could gain valuable experience
…you joined a unit with NCOs who cared about developing junior officers
…you didn’t get someone killed at your first live fire range…

Success

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Making Sense of Battalion Command Selection

Every year, hundreds of officers approach a professional development milestone that will determine whether they achieve what many consider a lifelong goal. That milestone is the Battalion Command Selection Board. Though they’ve put in hard work over countless hours to become competitive for this board, most officers are uninformed about how the Army selects battalion commanders and slates them to specific units.

Even officers I worked with at Human Resources Command were not aware of the intricacies of the process. This post aims to close that knowledge gap by explaining the Centralized Selection List (CSL) process. It is immediately relevant for Army officers competing for battalion command this year. It is ultimately relevant for anyone who wants to compete for battalion command at some point in his or her career.

The full version of this infographic is available at the end of this article.