The problem with examining from the 'create your own luck' angle is that it's prone to survivorship bias. There are incredibly brilliant people out there working hard in order to succeed, but end up having little success despite positioning themselves in all the right places.

This notion also tends to ignore the people that can fail upwards: They reach positions or become managers that they're not at all qualified at, but end up doing well through a few lucky rolls of the dice. I'm sure we'd all like to say that eventually this comes back around to bite them in the rear, but unfortunately that would imply a just world fallacy.