Meaning + Thought + Action = Success

Anyone reading this is surely aware that one of the most popular and enduring business/management books of the past decade was James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras' 1994 book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.

Now they've got a sequel, as it were, up their sleeves: Success Built to Last: Creating a Life That Matters, which Wharton School Publishing will be bringing out in August. In this interview with "Knowledge @ Wharton," they describe their motivation for the sequel and their findings. I use the word "findings" advisedly, because "Success" is the fruit of deep research and interviews with hundreds and hundreds of successful people.

Intriguingly, the idea for "Success" came not from Collins and Porras, but from their readers. Since virtually no one any more has a career at a single firm, people were trying to apply the lessons of Built to Last to their own careers, and as Collins and Porras began to pursue the metaphor of applying that book's lessons to an individual's career, they realized they were attempting nothing other than defining success.

"Success," then, would be?

"We found that three fundamental principles drive lasting success; these need to interact with one another and also to be integrated and aligned. We describe them in our first chapter in a diagram with three intersecting circles -- meaning, thought and action -- and the bull's eye is where they all come together. We found that individuals across the spectrum of professions were striving to find something that mattered to them in a very fundamental way. This prompted them to drive their thoughts to frame a way of producing those results -- and then acting on those results.

"If you take any one of those principles away -- for example, if you take meaning away from thought and action -- you might be successful in the short term. This is because you have a plan in your head and execute against it. But if your plan is disassociated from meaning, it might not matter. And it wouldn't have the meaning which sustains you through the inevitable challenges and difficulties of trying to create a career. That fundamental step of finding meaning, finding the passion that matters to you and that drives your behavior, is often skipped.

"When we interviewed people for our book, we learned that whether you are Jack Welch or the Dalai Lama, it is dangerous not to do what you love. If you don't have a level of passion that drives your thinking about what you're doing day in and day out, there will be others out there who are passionate who will overtake and outrun you. People who care will take the initiative away from those who are half-hearted. So loving what you do is a competitive imperative, not simply a nice thing to have." (emphasis supplied)

Of course it's not the worst thing to have a couple of mega-best-selling authors agree with you, but I have said this before, phrased slightly differently: Unless you're passionate about what you do, there'll be somebody down the hall who is, and when you're operating at 85% and he's operating at 110%, he will win.

There's more: Successful people don't strive for "success," and they operate in a mode of continuous learning.

How could people not strive for success?! Isn't that ultimately the name of the game? I analogize it to happiness in one's personal life. Happiness and success are not characteristics or states of being that can be pursued per se. Rather, the choices one makes, the beliefs and values one holds, the activities one pursues, are what one chooses: And happiness and/or success do or do not spontaneously emerge on the other side.

Collins and Porras say as much: If you ask successful people how they think about success, the answer is that they don't: "they start out to be very good at what matters to them," and then when the stars align success ensues.

Finally, they are "continuous learners," meaning they harvest the lessons of both success and failure, and they never ever blame others for their failings (intriguingly, the authors cite Sen. John McCain as an example of someone who has always refused to be a victim).

"These people were very consistent about looking to success and failure as feedback. In other words, it's all input. Sometimes, success can make you sloppy, just as a setback can make you [understand] more clearly what works and what doesn't."

So we have:

finding your passion;
becoming very good at what you love rather than pursuing "success" in the abstract; and
truly, honestly, with rigor and clarity, learning from your wins and your losses.

Tall order? Actually, it sounds like a life well lived to me.