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Mark Thompson recently spoke with Karen Elmhirst and explained the three-element pattern that was revealed through 200 interviews and validated with the World Success Survey on what it takes to achieve success over the long term.
Read this interview if you're interested in:
- How the dictionary definition of success varies from how most people define the word.
- What it takes to achieve success over the long term.
- Which three overlapping perspectives generate success.
- What 'builders' (highly successful people over time) do that is different than the rest of us.
Synopsis:
Built to Last (Collins, Porras) focused on what accounts for astonishing business success. Success Built to Last (Porras, Emery, Thompson)focuses on success on a personal level, identifying a consistent pattern with people who have achieved the extraordinary. One of the co-authors, Mark Thompson, talks with Karen Elmhirst and explains the three-element pattern that was revealed through 200 interviews and validated with the World Success Survey. Are you seeking more out of your life and/or your career? If so, this interview summary may help you gain clarity on how to move toward achieving your goals.
Expert bio:
Mark Thompson is co-author of Success Built To Last. He has two decades of experience as a senior executive, board member, management coach, entrepreneur, author, producer, and investor. As an executive coach and visiting scholar at Stanford University, Mark has led senior teams and organizations through vision, values, and strategy initiatives based on the business classic Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. Much of his coaching, strategic counseling and research springs from his experience as an insider in boardrooms and management committees, along with his passion for unlocking the unique skills of hundreds of remarkable people around the world, from non-profit leaders and billionaires, to the presidents of nations, and the CEOs of small and large international organizations.
Forbes Magazine honored Mark on its list of America's leading venture investors with the "Midas" touch in 2004. He has been an investor and chairman of many technology and media startups. He worked for a dozen years for his mentor, Charles Schwab, serving in a variety of senior roles, including Chief Communications Officer and later, as Executive Producer of what was in the late 90's one of the world's largest and most profitable websites, Schwab.com. Mark is a former board member of major private and public companies. He has been a speaker at London Business School, Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, The Economist, and Fortune Magazine conferences, The New York Stock Exchange summits with The Churchill Club and Financial Executives Institute.
KE: Mark, what prompted you and your co-authors, Jerry Porras and Stewart Emery, to do this research and write this book?
MT: It was a very exciting collaboration because the three of us came from very different backgrounds. Jerry Porras had written Built To Last in the early 90's, which is still one of the great business classics of all time, and he is retired as a professor at Stanford Business School. Stewart Emery, who had worked in the human transformation movement for 30 years, was actually the first CEO of EST. We all had the same question: What is it that makes for lasting individual success?
We went out and interviewed leaders from all walks of life, from middle managers to chief executives, to academy award winners, Nobel laureates, people who worked in a community, all people who had had an impact on their field or profession for at least 20 years. We did more than 200 interviews with people including Jack Welch, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett; people from government - Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George Bush Senior, John McCain, Nobel laureates, even the Dalai Lama was on the list. On our website (www.successbuilttolast.com) you will find a summary of the people that we interviewed, along with some video clips of those interviews.
Then we went out and did a worldwide survey working with Stanford and Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania and Howard University Researcher, Howard Moscovitz, to try to identify the drivers of lasting success for individuals.
One of the things we looked at was how people define success.
Which statement(s) would you choose to define success?
Make a difference; lasting impact.
Engaged in a life of personal fulfillment.
Set goals and achieve them.
Attain fame, money or power.
MT: In our survey only 7% of respondents chose fame, money and power as the definition of success. What's amazing about that is that if you actually look at any of the English dictionaries, whether it's Encarta or the Oxford or American Heritage, and you look up the word "success," you will find the achievement of goals, which is a good thing, but it also says it is the significant attainment of money, fame, or power. oEveryone agreed that 'making a difference' is success-living a life of personal fulfillment. - 1/3 agreed it was attaining goals. - 1/3 felt it was balancing their many passions. - 1/3 felt it was serving a cause or mission. - Virtually no one felt it was the attainment of fame, money or power.
When we have conversations with companies and management teams and boards, it really creates considerable heat in the room, because there is a kind of default definition of success that we have in the back of our head, assuming that others may share it. We found that we need to step back for a moment when we work with the management team and think about how each individual defines success. One's personal definition of success determines what motivates you, how you behave and how you work on a team.
We found when we looked at people who had been having an impact for 10, 20 or 30 years in their profession, they looked not only at their goals, but they overlapped them with what had meaning, what mattered in their lives. If you look at meaning and success together, you end up having a much bigger opportunity to have real impact for a very long time.
KE: In your book you talk about three perspectives of success. What are they?
 Karen Elmhirst, Co-host, Thought Leaders Live
Karen Elmhirst is always on the lookout for research and best practices in the areas of leadership, leadership development and organizational learning. Karen writes articles and interviews thought leaders in order to provide you with the information and resources you need to help you build great organizations. Karen is also an executive coach, working with leaders to help them identify their personal definitions of success and to live lives that support those intentions.
Karen has had experience in a wide range of industries and has held senior level positions in both marketing and sales. Karen has also been active as a writer, trainer, facilitator and communication coach. Her articles have appeared in the IHRIM Journal and Leadership Excellence as well as on HR.com. Karen graduated with Hons. Bachelor of Commerce degree from U.B.C in Vancouver, Canada. She completed her coaching training at The Coaches Training Institute.
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