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Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about luck, business case studies, the second generation in a family company, measuring the efficiency of the world's managers, and what to do after you decide.

From Entrepreneur: Do Entrepreneurs Make Their Own Luck -- Or Not?
"The world of venture capital is obsessed with winners. Former CEOs are recycled into new positions at new companies. Profitable VC groups raise new and bigger funds. The successful CEOs hobnob with the successful VCs, and the cycle continues. But should it? I didn't acquire many new skills in the two months between being completely broke and decently flush; someone just bought my company. In truth, luck and timing had a lot to do with it."

Wally's Comment: Everyone has luck. Everyone has good luck and bad luck. So the difference between winning and losing is less likely to hinge on the luck you draw and more likely to hinge on what you do with that luck. In addition to this article, you may want to read Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen. There's a good summary of their views on luck in Hansen's post, "You Can Manage Luck. Here's How ."

From Fortune: Business case studies: Overused, and often abused
"Popular business books often exaggerate what case studies can actually teach us, and when the evidence is shaky, the advice is suspect."

Wally's Comment: This is hardly the first article or blog post to point out the problems with the way many writers and speakers use examples as "evidence." For a quick review of the issues, read Bob Sutton's "A Well-Crafted Critique of Business "Success" Books and My Ambivalence About Good to Great ."

From the Globe and Mail: A second generation makes radical change
"In many family companies, offspring come on board simply by birthright, and continue business as usual. In rarer instances, the next generation exhibits true entrepreneurial spirit to dramatically transform the company. "

Wally's Comment: The odds are stacked against the family business. According to family business expert Paul Karofsky, "Fewer than one in three companies survive through a second generation of leadership; the odds dive to one in 10 among those that reach a third generation." For some background read "The Success Gene " from Inc.

From HBS Working Knowledge: Measuring the Efficacy of the World's Managers
"Over the past seven years, Harvard Business School's Raffaella Sadun and a team of researchers have interviewed managers at some 10,000 organizations in 20 countries. The goal: to determine how and why management practices differ vastly in style and quality not only across nations, but also across various organizations and industries."

Wally's Comment: One conclusion of this study that sheds some light on the post above is that "Family-owned businesses are often managed badly—particularly those run by a firstborn son who inherited the role of CEO. Founder-run firms also received low management scores." This study looks at how and how well managers set goals, monitor and modify performance, and reward top performers (or not).

From Ed Batista: Make The Right Decision...Or Make The Decision Right?
"Much of my work as a coach involves helping people wrestle with an important decision. Some of these decisions feel particularly big because they involve selecting one option to the exclusion of all others when the cost of being "wrong" can be substantial: If I'm at a crossroads in my career, which path should I follow? If I'm considering job offers, which one should I accept? If I'm being asked to relocate, should I move to a new city or stay put? And while I've written before on the conditions that support good decision-making and firmly believe that we can improve the quality of our decisions by following those guidelines, I'm also reminded of a comment made by Scott McNealy--a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and its CEO for 22 years--during a lecture I attended while I was in business school at Stanford. He was asked how he made decisions and responded by saying (I'm paraphrasing, but his point was crystal clear):     It's important to make good decisions. But I spend much less time and energy worrying about "making the right decision" and much more time and energy insuring that any decision I make turns out right."

Wally's Comment: I love this post because it agrees with a long-held belief of mine. I think we spend far too much time on the headwork of making decisions and not nearly enough on the "doing" of making the decision work. Ed's analysis and writing on this are far more substantive than mine, which is a good reason to read this post.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to check back on Wednesday when I select five excellent posts from the week's independent business blogs. Last week I highlighted posts on performance management, ethical behavior, setting goals, work-life synergy, and one way you may be sabotaging yourself.

Studying individual leaders is a great way to learn about leadership. That's why my weekly post points you to posts by or about individual leaders. Last week I pointed you to posts by and about Pekka A. Viljakainen, Adriana Cisneros de Griffin, John Paul DeJoria, and Katherine Hays.

"What if leadership wasn't a promotion?" and "Lonely at Work " were popular posts on my blog last week.

If you want to get a book done, improve your blog posts, or make your web copy more productive, please check out my blog about business writing. My coaching calendar for authors and blog writers currently has time open. Please contact me if you're interested.

If you're a boss, you should check out my Working Supervisor's Support Kit.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.