Success has always been an American preoccupation, but the definition of success takes on a new urgency today, when every conventional measure of success seems to have a faster burn rate than ever before. During the 1990s, we saw a dramatic rise in the rate of economic growth. Fueled by such radical changes as the Internet, measures of corporate and personal wealth became obsolete almost before the next quarter's performance results were reported. When the markets inevitably plunged, the paper billionaires and millionaires of the new economy took a haircut to the tune of several trillion dollars.
Overworked and undersatisfied in the boom, overworked and competitively vulnerable in the bust, traditional career paths suddenly seem pointless. What is success if you can't enjoy it? You mean I have to go out there and do it again? Even a once-simple idea like success in war is quickly shattered into a myriad of untidy problems in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many people feel unprepared for this new world. It's not just about longer hours at work, uncertain job prospects, questions about retirement and health insurance, nor the newfound sense of peril we felt in witnessing the hottest stocks suffer market meltdown and once unsullied skies host a terrorist attack on New York City. It's about wanting to build something of lasting value in a world where the ground shifts daily. It's about wanting to make the most of your life.
At one time, success was a rich idea, representing a varied landscape of virtues, accomplishments, and rewards. Today, it has been reduced to a flat idea of riches. For that we are all the poorer. A few decades ago, a "two-comma" bank account (that's millions to you and me) used to be considered a mighty big success. But by the mid-
1990s, there dangled the possibility of "three-comma" bank accounts by age thirty. As one interviewee told us, "Who wants to be a millionaire when billionaire is the new standard?" Like the simple man in the fable, the idea of success seems to have wandered far afield into an expectation of limitless expansion: getting more, doing more, being more. As author Michael Lewis stated, it's a world centered on "next" and "The New New Thing," a landscape of the infinite more. As the ante gets higher, our experience of success has been impoverished. Where there is no possibility of satisfaction, nothing is ever enough. Which brings us to this book.
When we began our research--just after September 11, 2001--we discovered that many people shared the concerns that inspired our project. More than ever, people were asking, "Am I making the most out of my life?" Whether it was a Harvard Business School reunion class at the top of its form, our survey of top executives, or someone downsizing his or her career, the message was refreshing: "Me first" is not all there is. Their problem was not an inability to imagine the good life in terms larger than money, but knowing how to go after it.
Whether your dilemmas are about uses of wealth or sources of pleasure, everyone struggles to some degree with when to go for more and when to say "that's just enough" and move on. Everyone faces conflicting desires between self-interest and being part of something that requires self-restraint for the sake of community. At one time, it was valid to ask leaders, parents, and workers whether they were doing enough for themselves and for others. Today these questions have nearly been washed away in the glamorous tide of celebrity ambition and celebrity crashes, from Enron to political candidates.
Like many, we've been discouraged by the moral failings of the past decade's success ethos. How to make sense of authority figures who one day seem to exude leadership legitimacy and the next are caught with their hands in the cookie jar or in the wrong bed? Such behaviors have led to a national crisis of trust about those whom we designate leaders. This situation presents a critical challenge not only to business and government as we identify successful leadership traits, but to individuals as they seek to define the terms on which they will pursue future prosperity and a good life.
In Just Enough, we take a fresh look at the foundational assumptions behind the idea of success, and provide a challenging but practical framework you can use to pursue and realize a success that you and others will truly value. Our core message is that success is not about one thing nor an infinite number of things; it is about "just enough." We found that reaching this state requires your active engagement in four very different kinds of goals: Happiness, Achievement, Significance, and Legacy. These form the basic structure of our success model, and with these tools you can construct your own unique profile. The framework can be helpful to people who are scaling back their career goals and those who are just starting out; to the promising leaders of great organizations and the breakaway seekers of a better vocation.
Our model is absolutely counterintuitive to the advice that tells you the secret to success is passion and focus, focus, focus. Interestingly, research in complex decision making suggests that it is actually possible to reach a constructive sense of limitation more easily in a complex landscape than when you seek one big, far-off goal. Judging by the way in which people seem to resonate to the four categories, it seems that we already have an adaptive capacity for this kind of complexity. The trick is not to kill this complexity in ourselves, but to make room for it.
