Success Built to Last
Creating a Life that Matters
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- $33.99
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- $33.99
Publisher Description
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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Porras, who co-wrote the original Built to Last, teams with successful life coaching company co-founder Emery and top executive coach Thompson, to interview 300 successful people, tagged "builders," to uncover the secrets of their winning life journeys. Though there's a good deal of wisdom here (for example, when faced with failure, builders "let it go not because they're in denial, but because they must keep focused on what they're building"), the book does not skimp on the platitudes ("losers call it failure; winners call it learning"). The early portion of the book overdoes the authors' excitement about the range and depth of the interviews, setting the reader up for disappointment in the long, less-than-profound stretches. The high volume of contributions, however-from Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Maya Angelou, Jack Welch, Stephen Jobs and a host of other well-known and lesser-known achievers-makes this book better suited for picking and choosing than reading cover-to-cover. Segmented into presentations on meaning, "ThoughtStyles" and action, lessons depend largely on common sense, a willingness to accept responsibility, and the idea that "pain or passion will make you good enough; but pain plus passion will point you to greatness."
