There is a phrase ("歪打正着" in Chinese and "怪我の功名" in Japanese) which roughly means "do the wrong thing but achieve the right result anyway". Is there a similar phrase or idiom in English?
Examples:
- (From the related question): The subject brings a gift to a friend but the friend wasn't present. When the subject tried again on another day, the friend was present, but - unknown to the subject - it was also the friend's birthday, so the gift became a birthday gift too.
- When you lose your job/lover but this leads you to find a much better one
Some translations available online are "score a lucky hit" or "hit by a fluke" but I feel these do not capture the incongruity between approach and outcome.
Compare this with situational irony, which is often used when the aim or intent is good but the outcome is incongruously bad.