How To Handle Bad Luck With Mojo

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 How To Handle Bad Luck With Mojo

Luck is only one component of mojo. However, if your group is underperforming because of bad luck, you may be frustrated and wonder what to do. First, I suggest reviewing my posts about the components of mojo, whether it is better to lucky than good, and my top 10 sites defining or exploring luck. Once you have reviewed these and understand what I mean by luck, you can start to address your own bad luck.

As I have said many times, luck is unpredictable. If you are satisfied that you have enough mojo to continue until you are luckier, then that is a valid approach. In other words, if you are confident that all of the other components of mojo are solid, then you can wait for luck to come to you. However, I am going to address what to do if you want to enhance your chances of being luckier.

In the remainder of this post, I will assume that bad luck is not your only problem. If it were, I would be advising you to wait it out because luck tends to even out in the long run.

The first task is to figure out what else about your mojo is weak. I have several blog posts on what to do if you are lacking in a given area, like for instance, willingness to act. It is up to you to figure out which components of mojo are lacking. I will discuss your people in general, but the same advice applies to the individual who is your highest mojo person. For example, if your people are poorly trained, you may expect to see failures in multiple areas. Your people may not be able to carry out their assignments. Usually, the fault is before the performance or competition. Look at your people’s motivation, at their faith, and at their support. If these are good, but you are failing during competition or performance, look at experience and expertise. If you are doing well but fall for tricks, the same areas, expertise and experience may be at fault. If you are failing right at the end or at crunch time, willingness to act may be at fault. In short, finding out when you are failing is the first step towards finding out why you are failing. If you can identify the problem, then there are three approaches to fix it. 

1. Change roles - pick a different person to be your high-mojo person with the most responsibility. You can also consider changes in lower responsibility roles and in coaches, trainers, and managers.

2. Increase mojo for any weak performer - keep the same people in the same roles, but coach them to improve their mojo. Consider especially more training in expertise or experience.

3. Use distributed mojo - Split the responsibility of the high mojo person so that he has help in specific weak areas. The most common area is in willingness to act. The solution is to give the responsibility for clutch performance to someone else. 


Of course, these can be done in combination as well. You have a tough problem to fix. Best of luck.

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