Maximum Success
Breaking The 12 Bad Business Habits
Before They Break You
By James Waldroop and Timothy Butler HarperCollinsBusiness £19.99 (UK)
Acrophobia is the fear of heights and the career version is described in Maximum Success as the belief of some that they are incapable of staying on the level they have scaled.
Lack of self-esteem allows them to undermine themselves and hold themselves back so they never "suffer" the fate of rising too far in the organisation. They never rise out of their comfort level. Sound familiar?
The "meritocrat" on the other hand is one of those who insist their ideas - everything - must be considered on their inherent merit. Everything is black and white, with no shades of grey.
The meritocrat lives in a parallel universe where emotions, relationships and luck are absent - not in the real world. Meritocrats lack the nous to compromise and get on with people. Former Apple vice-president Guy Kawasaki promotes the doctrine of "don't worry, be crappy". If your product is at least 10 times better than what came before then it is good enough for the marketplace. The 12 behaviour patterns analysed in Maximum Success apply equally to men and women, with one exception - the "bulldozer".
Although some women merit this description, such as Margaret Thatcher, the authors write, it is a condition they see more often in men.
Waldroop and Butler are directors of MBA career development at Harvard Business School and their corporate clients include Citibank, General Electric and Hewlett-Packard. They point out that the perfect career is as elusive as perfect health.
You cannot change who you are or what has happened in the past, but you can recognise and alter patterns of behaviour that threaten the health of your career. The examples of ailing executives who turned themselves around in this book highlight personalities and traits familiar to us all.
Maximum Success is well written and accessible, if a little bit on the hard-sell side.
jmulqueen@irish-times.ie
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