Ep 155: Andy Nairn of Lucky Generals - "The Luck Seeker"

Andy Nairn is the Co-Founder of Lucky Generals, who describe themselves as a creative company for people on a mission. Andy has been named the top brand strategist in the UK for the last three years and has also been named one of the top 5 creative people in world advertising.

Andy has just written a book called Go Luck Yourself, which discusses the role luck can and should play in unlocking creative thinking and innovation. During our conversation, he tells a story about Quincy Jones.

Quincy Jones has won 28 Grammys during his career and been nominated for 58 more.

He believes that luck is an essential element of the creative process.

In fact, so deep and omnipresent is his commitment to luck that inscribed on his studio wall is this - “Let God walk through the room.”

You may or may not be religious - I’m not - but this sense of making space for some other force during the creative process resonates with me. It is reminiscent of Elizabeth Gilbert’s reminder in Eat, Pray, Love that the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that creativity was a divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source. And it is familiar to me in that my best work comes when I am willing to be less in control. And then, it is not just inspiration that comes, but a force that takes over to such an extent that sometimes I don’t remember the act of creating. Maybe you’ve experienced something similar yourself?

The art of fearlessly leading creative thinking and innovation has many components. But this idea of allowing luck into the equation doesn’t come up very often. And never by design.

And yet, by its very definition, creating time for the unpredictable, light for the unseen, and opportunity for the accidental, must be part of any business that depends for its success on the ability to discover the new.

So if you find yourself running from meeting to meeting, brief to brief, financial statement to financial statement, maybe stop for a moment and ask yourself whether you’ve left any room for luck. And if not, why not?