Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson mentions plenty of famous names but its main emphasis is on how ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
Although some of the book’s findings are predictable (Successful people maintain a high level of passion for their calling), one of the book’s strengths is its willingness to challenge conventional wisdom – they’re not big on balance and love obsession – or give it some new twists, such as noting that if you don’t love what you do you’ll be at a competitive disadvantage to someone who does.
A listing of traps that can keep you from responding to your true career desire includes:
- Getting too practical.
- Letting things (“Bright Shiny Objects”) own you.
- Being seduced by competence; i.e., beng simply good instead of great.
- Pleasing others instead of yourself and creating false choices (“ors”) when you can have “ands.”
Those are only sidelines. The main theme is the necessity to find a cause that will engage your passion and your efforts and, regardless of your personal charisma, provide you with the charisma of its mission and the self-esteem that comes from achievement. The cause is all. It gives you drive, sustains you when setbacks occur, and is far more realistic than mere positive thinking.
Persistence and a rock-solid determination not to act like a victim bolster the commitment to the cause. But so too is the pragmatic willingness to drop projects that are failures if they prove to be inadequate avenues to furthering the cause.
There were many times when I found myself arguing with Success Built to Last. “But what about this event?” and “There are exceptions to that!” came to mind more than once. I have to admit though, that the book’s most powerful appeal is not the Big Hairy Audacious Goals (from Jim Collins’s and Porras’s Built to Last) or its interesting personal success stories.
It’s the power of The Cause and how finding one can unleash creativity, strength, and energy that a quest for mere personal advancement will never unchain.