Apr

24

How Successful People Stay Successful

Filed Under Leadership Resources 

There’s an interview in Knowledge@Wharton with Mark Thompson and Stewart Emery, co-authors of a new book to be titled “Success Built to Last“, which they wrote with Jerry Porras. You’ll known Jerry Porras from his popular 1994 book, Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials) which he wrote with Jim Collins. The primary difference between “Built to Last” and “Success Built to Last” is that the first book focused on companies, the new one is about individuals, seeking to answer, “What make a life built to last?” Some highlights from the interview:

The Need for a Long-Term View…

Life expectancies have gone up, and it turns out that people are likely on average to far outlive the average life of corporations. So how do you create a life built to last…? And then, if you consider the fact that people might have multiple careers, what are the attributes that are essential to the individual to allow that kind of reinvention? While careers may come and go, the success of the individual is sustained across multiple careers. That became a driving force as we got into our research.

Three Fundamental Principles that Drive Lasting Success

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….. That fundamental step of finding meaning, finding the passion that matters to you and that drives your behavior, is often skipped. ….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.

Focus on your Passion and Success will Follow

People don’t start out to be successful — they start out to be very good at what matters to them. And when timing and circumstances come together, then they end up with success.

Successful People Harvest their Failures

Some people have enormous setbacks in their lives, or they make mistakes, but you have to learn from your mistakes. As Quincy Jones, the musician, asked us, when was the last time you actually did that? When did you take the lessons from a setback and put them to use? 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. They’re disciplined about looking at how things had good or bad results and seeing them as opportunities for improvement.

The book is expected to be published later this year by Wharton School Publishing. In the interim the authors are conducting a World Success Survey, participants in the survey will receive a free chapter of their book and also a significant discount on the book when it is published later this year. You can take part in the survey here. You can also visit the Success Built to Last website for more information, it sound like this is going to be an interesting book when it’s released.

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