Anyone reading this is surely aware that one of the most popular and
enduring business/management books of the past decade was James C. Collins
and Jerry I.
Porras’
1994 book, Built to Last: Successful
Habits of Visionary Companies.
Now they’ve got a sequel, as it were, up their sleeves: Success
Built to Last: Creating a Life That Matters, which Wharton
School Publishing will be bringing out in August. In this
interview with "Knowledge @ Wharton," they describe their
motivation for the sequel and their findings. I use the word "findings"
advisedly, because "Success" is the fruit of deep
research and interviews with hundreds and hundreds of successful people.
Intriguingly, the idea for "Success" came not from
Collins and Porras, but from their readers. Since virtually no
one any more has a career at a single firm, people were trying to apply
the lessons of Built to Last to their own careers, and as Collins
and Porras began to pursue the metaphor of applying that book’s lessons
to an individual’s career, they realized they were attempting nothing
other than defining success.
"Success," then, would be?
"We found that three fundamental principles drive lasting
success; these need to interact with one another and also to be integrated
and aligned. We describe them in our first chapter in a diagram with three
intersecting circles — meaning, thought and action — and the bull’s eye
is where they all come together. We found that individuals across the
spectrum of professions were striving to find something that mattered
to them in a very fundamental way. This prompted them to drive their
thoughts to frame a way of producing those results — and then acting
on those results."If you take any one of those principles away — for
example, if you take meaning away from thought and action — you might
be successful in the short term. This is because you have a plan in your
head and execute against it. But if your plan is disassociated from meaning,
it might not matter. And it wouldn’t have the meaning which sustains
you through the inevitable challenges and difficulties of trying to create
a career. That fundamental step of finding meaning, finding the passion
that matters to you and that drives your behavior, is often skipped."When we interviewed people for our book, we learned that whether you
are Jack Welch or the Dalai Lama, it is dangerous
not to do what you love. If you don’t have a level of passion that
drives your thinking about what you’re doing day in and day out, there
will be others out there who are passionate who will overtake and outrun
you. People who care will take the initiative away from those who are
half-hearted. So
loving what you do is a competitive imperative, not simply a
nice thing to have." (emphasis supplied)
Of course it’s not the worst thing to have a couple
of mega-best-selling authors agree with you, but I have said this before,
phrased slightly differently: Unless you’re passionate about what you do,
there’ll be somebody down the hall who is, and when you’re operating at
85% and he’s operating at 110%, he will win.
There’s more: Successful people don’t strive for "success," and
they operate in a mode of continuous learning.
How could people not strive for success?! Isn’t that
ultimately the name of the game? I analogize it to happiness in
one’s personal life. Happiness and success are not characteristics
or states of being that can be pursued per se. Rather, the choices
one makes, the beliefs and values one holds, the activities one pursues,
are what one chooses: And happiness and/or success do or do not
spontaneously emerge on the other side.
Collins and Porras say as much: If you ask successful people how
they think about success, the answer is that they don’t: "they
start out to be very good at what matters to them," and then when the
stars align success ensues.
Finally, they are "continuous learners," meaning they harvest the lessons
of both success and failure, and they never ever blame others for their
failings (intriguingly, the authors cite Sen. John McCain as an example
of someone who has always refused to be a victim).
"These people were very
consistent about looking to success and failure as feedback. In other words,
it’s all input. Sometimes, success can make you sloppy, just as a setback
can make you [understand] more clearly what works and what doesn’t."
So we have:
- finding your passion;
- becoming very good at what you love rather than pursuing "success"
in the abstract; and - truly, honestly, with rigor and clarity, learning from your wins
and your losses.
Tall order? Actually, it sounds like a life well lived to me.
