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Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters
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Sales rank 78,288
Customers rating (based on 49 reviews)
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Chosen by BusinessWeek as one of the top 5 books of 2006 in careers. Read the full story at businessweek.com.  Imagine discovering what successful people have in common, distilling it into a set of simple practices, and using them to transform your life and work. Authored by three legends in leadership and self-help — including Built to Last co-author Jerry Porras — it challenges conventional wisdom at every step. Success Built to Last draws on face-to-face, unscripted conversations with hundreds of remarkable human beings from around the world. Meet billionaires, CEOs, presidents of nations, Nobel laureates and celebrities — the rich, the famous and the unknown. Meet unsung heroes who've achieved lasting impact without obvious power or charisma. Famous or not, most started out ordinary. Discover how successful people "harvest" their strengths and their weaknesses, their victories and their surprising failures. Discover how you can find meaning in your life and work just as they did and summon the courage to follow your passions. Above all, see how they've sustained success for decades and you can too.  Foreword by Senator John McCain Acknowledgements  Introduction–From Built to Last to Success Built to Last Chapter 1: From Great to Lasting–Redefining Success  Part I: Meaning–How Successful People Stay Successful Chapter 2: Love it or Lose–Passions and the Quest for Meaning Chapter 3: Portfolio of Passions–It’s Not About Balance Chapter 4: Why Successful People Stay Successful–Integrity to Meaning  Part II: ThoughtStyles–Extreme Makeovers Start in Your Head Chapter 5: The Silent Scream–Why It’s So Damn Hard to Do What Matters Chapter 6: The Cause Has Charisma–You Don’t Have to Be Charismatic to Be Successful Chapter 7: The Tripping Point–Always Make New Mistakes Chapter 8: Wounds to Wisdom–Trusting Your Weaknesses and Using Your Core Incompetencies  Part III: ActionStyles–Turning Passion into Action Chapter 9: Earning Your Luck–Preparing for Serendipity by Using Big Hairy Audacious Goals Chapter 10: Naked Conversations–Harvesting Contention Chapter 11: Creating Alignment–The Environment Always Wins The Pleasure of Finding Things Out–A Look at the Research Behind Success Built to Last  Endnotes Biographical Index Index
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| Publisher | Wharton School Publishing | | Release date | 09/2006 | | Availability | | | Edition | Hardcover |
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 Success Built to Last
Excellent content for developing leadership abilities. Easy to read and understand, loads of examples of successful leaders to reflect upon.
Alignment is the key to success
This is not a "How To" book. The authors convey that over and over. It is a book about how others have achieved lasting success. This is quite a different approach than most self help books.
The key to lasting success, based on hundreds of surveys and interviews with successful people, is keeping thought, meaning, and action all in alignment. They way to do this is to do what you love and love what you do. It's that simple--and that complicated. Success lies at the intersection of thought, meaning and action, and this book gives clear examples of how each plays out in the lives of successful people. The common theme that comes through in this book is that people must have a passion for what they do, or else their chances of success will be greatly diminished. Someone else will with more passion do it better. In fact, they say, it is dangereous not to do what you love. Only passion will keep you centered on success. A key question posed is, "Do you care more about being loved than about being what you love?"
This is a great addition to the body of knowledge about success and how it is achieved.
Excellent Study on Success!
This is a great book that dissects the factors contributing to success and presents us with the most fundamental principles of success. The main idea about this book is that in order to have a meaningful and successful life that matters is to pursue your passion, doing what you love, doing what matters the most to you. This book looks at successful individuals and identifies three key components that are common among different successful individuals. The key components are the meaning of success, the thought style and the action style. The first component, meaning of success, help us redefine what success is meant to us. The second component, thought style, explores the thinking or mindset of successful individuals that kept them successful. The last component, action style, examines how successful individuals turn their passion into actions and reality.
Part I - Meaning of Success
The first chapter of this section explains the definition of success which held by those successful individual is different from conventional meaning of success. To these individuals success is defined by their passion, their meaning of life and doing things that matters to them.
The second chapter demonstrates that these successful individual do not have "balance" life style as define in the conventional way. They devote their entire life to do what matters to them. If they feel a need for balance it is because they usually have a portfolio of passion. The way they balance their life is to devote time to the other passion.
The third chapter for this part explains why successful people keep on working even after they have made enough money for their entire life. These individual keep working is because wealth is never their goal. Their reason for working is to be truth to their passion and truth to their values and the meaning of their life.
Part II - Thought Style
The first chapter explores various obstacles that could prevent us from pursuing our passion. It discovers that being success does not meant chasing after a worthy career, material possession, pleasing the others, approval and validation from others or giving up your own cause to please others. Successful people are successful because they pursue their dreams and passion despite of socially accepted career, wealth or approval and validation from the society. They pursue their own cause AND at the same time serving others (not pleasing others).
The second chapter from part II, explains that these individual do not necessary have the charisma, but it is the cause that carries the charisma. By immersing yourself in doing what matters to you, the cause has the charisma to pull you through hard times and unleash your passion. Your willingness to become great at what you do is the key of success. You do not wait for the right time or when you gain self confident to get started, you get started by doing what you love.
The third chapter indicates that all successful individual encounters failures; in fact, their failures are much more severe than ordinary people. What is important is to have a mindset that allows us to learn from our setback quickly and keep moving forward toward the dream relentlessly. This involves a lot of trial and errors. Successful individual keeps making new mistake.
The last chapter for this part explores how successful individual deals with their flaws, disability, and major tragedies in their journey to success. Successful individual don't overcome their disability, they manage it, cope with it, live with it and don't let the disability affects their passion. They don't deny their flaws; instead they work around them such as getting other people to complement their flaws. For major tragedies that happen to them, successful individuals will try to find treasure in every painful experience, they do not blame others for what happen to them; instead they hold themselves accountable for their future and refuse to let the painful experience prevent them from pursing their dreams.
Part II - Action Style
The first chapter explains that successful individuals always plan ahead with Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) that has meaning and matters to them. They know that what they seek doesn't always turn out as expected; therefore, they are prepared to seize the best opportunities that serendipity can provide.
This chapter focuses on embracing contention; listen to different ideas and challenging yours. Successful individuals while obsess with their goals never stops listening to different ideas on how to reach the goals.
The final chapter, emphasize that in order to achieve our dreams, we can do it alone. We need to recruit other people that support our cause. We need to create an environment that aligns our passion, our thought, and our actions that are meaningful and matters to us. We must walk the talk. This final section on this book emphasizes the importance and the difficulties of aligning our thoughts, action with our passion and meaning. It is a challenge that never ends.
Build a lasting legacy of success
My grandfather was born in the early 1900's, and as a furniture maker by trade he used to always say, "They don't make things like they used to." While that saying may be a tired cliché today, it does contain a truth at its core - a truth that applies to more than just furniture. In Success Built to Last, its author team of researchers and experts in organizational development examined the idea of building a lasting legacy of success. What sets this book apart from similar efforts is that the writers based it on the results generated from their own independent, prospective survey data gleaned from hundreds of successful people from the world over. This enabled them to capture fresh insight rather than a retrospective retread of dated data material. Soundview likes this book because it turns the traditional notion of success on its head. Based on the multi-faceted definitions provided by the survey participants who embody success - there simply isn't a single descriptor for that elusive state of being that so many of us pursue but few achieve. However, the authors successfully identify the practices and habits that give you the best chance to transform your current condition into an idealized state that you can find and define as success.
To thine own self be true.
This book is about common traits of what the authors call "enduringly successful people" or "builders." The findings are the result of original research.
"The traditional definition of success was resoundingly trounced in this survey, as well as our personal interviews... Nowhere in the dictionary definition do you find any reference to finding meaning, fulfillment, happiness, and lasting relationships. No mention of feeling fully alive while engaged and connected with a calling that matters to you."
The formula for lasting success is the alignment of Meaning, Thought, and Action.
"It's dangerous not to do what you love. The harsh truth is that if you don't love what you're doing, you'll lose to someone who does!"
"This book is not about worshipping the accomplishments of inaccessible larger-than-life overachievers. That simply doesn't work... It's a mistake to make major choices about your career and your life based entirely on chasing a dream promoted by other people."
The personal struggles with dyslexia by Charles Schwab, Richard Branson, and John Chambers were very interesting to read about. "Frankly, I don't have the luxury of leaving things complicated," said Schwab. "As it turns out, smart people like our customers hate overly complicated stuff, too! There has always been a huge opportunity in demystifying things for clients."
Successful people seek out contention. "We're talking about gloves-off, brutally frank dialog. It's what some pundits call naked conversations... Builders don't fend off contention; they manage it as a source of inspiration."
The authors examine the topic of a balanced life. They conclude that balance, as culturally defined, is nonsense. What people really want is a meaningful portfolio of passions.
"When you take a timeout to shift your attention from the stressful stuff to something uplifting and apparently unrelated - particularly if it's one of your passions - your state of mind improves. Enduringly successful people find they get many great insights when they're playing at something else - or somehow not wrestling with problems directly."
Bill Strickland, CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation notes, "My theory is that we need the arts as a part of our mental health."
I found this book partly validating, and partly cause for self-reflection.
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