Book: Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters

Author: Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, Mark Thompson

Summary: Satyendra Dwivedi

Healthy, sustainable societies require the creation of healthy, sustainable organizations and societies can only be built by human beings who can grow and create meaningful success.

We learned that, for the most part, extraordinary people, teals, and organizations are simply ordinary people doing extraordinary things that matter to them.

Ch. 1: From Great to Lasting – Redefining Success

For builders, the real definition of success is a life and work that brings personal fulfillment and lasting relationships and makes a difference in the world they live.

Builders find lasting success when at least three essential elements come into alignment in their lives and work:

1.         Meaning: Something that you are so passionate about that you lose all track of time when you do it.

2.         Thought Style: A highly developed sense of accountability, audacity, passion, and responsible optimism.

3.         Action Style: Enduringly successful people find effective ways to take action.

Become consciously aware of what matters to you and then rally thought and action to support your definition of meaning. That is what we call alignment.

Ch. 2: Love It or Lose – Passions and the Quest for Meaning

“The only place where you find success before work is in the dictionary.”

-Mary V. Smith

“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.”

-       Antonio de Saint-Exupery

“The job of leadership today is not just to make money, it’s to make meaning. Talented people are looking for organizations that offer not only money, but — spiritual goals that energize — (that) resonate with the personal values of the people who work there, the kind of mission that offers people a chance to do work that makes a difference.”

-       John Seely Brown

When you are deeply immersed in the process of doing whatever you are doing, and completely lose track of time and place, you are in a flow experience.

Finding and doing the thing you love offers you a very different experience of work. In fact, it may not feel like work at all. Builders typically refer to their work as “tremendous fun”.

“The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

-       Abraham Lincoln

You must choose a path you love, for better or worse, because only then you have the good-hearted stubbornness to stretch for your full potential and survive the inevitable slings and arrows that await you on your bold journey.

Ch. 3: Portfolio of Passions – It’s Not About Balance

“To find your mission in life is to discover the intersection between your heart’s deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger.”

-       Frederick Beekner

“Passion is what enables leaders to hold their integrity despite social pressures….

Leaders are people who don’t compromise their values to gain approval, who live up to their own inner sense of things. And for this reason, leadership is often different than success. Success is culturally defined. When you give the culture what it expects, the culture will reward that. But, a leader is someone who gives the culture what it needs, not what it expects. A real leader heals the wounds of their culture.”

-       Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen

Ch. 4: Why Successful People Stay Successful – Integrity to Meaning

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

-       Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever their circumstances, Builders are consistent about one thing: They are always driving for meaning that makes a difference in their lives and work.

Our message is that lasting impact and your commitment to integrity (to personal meaning) as a core value go hand in hand.

What helps successful people stay successful is their stubbornness about sticking with their own journey based on their own values, not a magic path followed precisely by anyone else. 

Ch. 5: The Silent Scream – Why it’s So Damn Hard to Do What Matters

Craving acceptance, we pack our driveways, resumes, and ring fingers with BSOs – Bright Shiny Objects – fancy cars, club memberships, designer clothing, advanced degrees, high priced real estate, or anything else that’s paraded as belonging to the lifestyles of the rich, smart, and famous.

Beware of your natural tendency to rationalize what you should or aught to do as defined by other people. Humans are rationalization machines. One thing we often rationalize is working to become pretty good at a profession we don’t particularly like.

People who have found success that lasts pursue their goals because they matter to them, often despite popularity or recognition.

“The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

-       Steve Jobs

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drown your own voice – and most important – have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

-       Steve Jobs

Ch. 6: The Cause Has Charisma – You Don’t Have to be Charismatic to be Successful

Builders cling to a personal commitment that’s so compelling to them that they would actually do it for free – that they must do it despite popularity, not because of it.

“When you have ‘earned’ knowledge, you have an ethical responsibility to ‘invest’ that capital – those skills – on making a difference in business or public service.”

-       Prof. Condoleezza Rice

For the cause to have charisma, it must reach into your heart in a personal way to unlock all you have to give.

Disclaimer: This is summary of the book. However the copyright of the book is with publisher and author.

Part-II