The Hindu Business Line : Have success formulas become blasé?

At one time, especially in the industrial West, the market used to be flooded with books of “How to....” genre, giving basket-loads of tips on how to succeed in whatever enterprise or activity one undertakes. Many of them were on the media’s best-selling lists for months, some for a year or more.

They covered every field of endeavour from running a company to writing, gardening, making movies or simply making money in the stock market.

How to bring near-dead companies back to life and how to conquer the market were some of the themes that never lost their magic, and books on them sold in their millions.

There was even a book on How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying! The sum and substance of the contents of these books is that effective leadership is the master key to unlock doors of success in whatever area. So, this top ic has been flogged to death.

Finding that stopping with flaunting formulas for attaining success carries with it the danger of blocking all further “How to....” books, recently someone has tried to answer the question “After success, what and how?” with a book titled: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful! In this book, the author lists 21 bad habits because of which the successful do not become more successful!

If you are curious to know what the 21 bad habits are, here they are: Winning too much (whatever that may mean); adding too much value (oh, yeah?); passing judgment; making destructive comments; starting with ‘No,’ ‘But,’ or ‘However’; telling the world how smart we are; speaking when angry; negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”; withholding information; failing to give recognition; claiming credit we don’t deserve; making excuses; clinging to the past; playing favourites; refusing to express regret; not listening; failing to express gratitude; punishing the messenger; passing the buck; an excessive need to be ‘me’; and goal obsession (surprise, surprise!). (Please count and check all the 21 are there!)

Greatest attraction

Although there is no such offer in the book in so many words, I am sure the author will not mind — and it is unlikely to do any harm or add any more value — if you are inventive enough to throw in a dozen more for keeps.

The greatest attraction of a subject like leadership or success for gurus churning out potboilers by the dozens is this: Any mumbo-jumbo can pass for immutable mantras, without anyone being able to quarrel with it, leave alone going to Court to get the money back for the failure of the formulas sought to be peddled. (In any case, such books do not come with a money back guarantee!)

Let me then, taking a leaf out of these books, venture to set out a modest litany of just five bad habits of success pushers and leadership fixers.

Taking infinite care to lay down prescriptions unsuited to real life situations or even live human beings. It is pointless to blame them since most gurus have not been where the action is.

Using worn-out jargon or cliches, and not simple, crisp language quickly intelligible to an average executive.

In a bid to ‘shock and awe’ to capture attention, indulging in ludicrous concoctions.

For instance, ‘winning too much’, ‘adding too much value’ and ‘goal obsession’ in the earlier list fall within this category.

In order to make the book as bulky as possible, spinning out commonplace ideas into pages of viscous verbiage.

Recycling one another’s nostrums in different garbs and guises.

Well?

B. S. RAGHAVAN

More Stories on : Books | Management | Offhand

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Move to ‘kill’ Kolkata

Coping with the flow

The Kalam legacy

The RBI’s silent signals

A sensible policy, on expected lines

Interest rates should stabilise around current levels

Have success formulas become blasé?

Bio-crop business