Make Chance Your Opportunity

Po Bronson, a former bond trader turned writer, gathered life stories of more than nine hundred people and then spent time with seventy of them.  He asked each one how he or she had answered the question:   "What should I do with my life?"  Bronson concluded that almost everyone interviewed found his or her calling only after great difficulty;

*  A catfish farmer used to be an investment banker

*  A truck driver used to be an entertainment lawyer

*  A police officer had a Harvard MBA.

Bronson believes that the answer to the question "What should I do with my life" doesn't usually strike like a lightning bolt, but most of the time in merely a small voice or faint urge.  

If Bronson is right - and if our true calling usually reveals itself in just a whisper - how can we possibly make it a reality?  My answer is to keep your ears - and your options - open, listening for the whisper and making chance your opportunity.  As I became more involved in purchasing management, I realized I needed to know more about my new profession.

For me, that meant a lot more work and preparation than luck.  So in 1967 I took two important steps.  First, I joined the predecessor of the Institute for Supply Management, which was called the National Association of Purchasing Agents (NAPA) .  Meetings were held at my old school, Purdue University, in Lafayette.

Second, through NAPA, I took my first certification course, "The Fundamentals of Purchasing."

This was not an easy course.  Two of us drove 130 miles round-trip every week for ten weeks back and forth to Indianapolis.  The instructor was Richard Bothel, a vice president of purchasing at Ford's steering gear operation in Indianapolis. Richard Bothel's classes, and the fact that a senior member of the profession took the time to teach the rest of us, made a strong and lasting impression on me.  This fundamentals course, and so many others that followed, reinforced the idea that opportunities come not to those who wait but to those who prepare.  I call it leveling up.