The Secrets of Their Success - and Yours

Jeannette Galvanek

President And CEO, Talent Alliance
Morristown, New Jersey

Success is very personal. It's about energizing ideas and turning them into reality. And it's as unique as those who achieve it. I have five guidelines for success:

1. Create your own trophies: Define success for yourself and learn to live by this definition. Balance the expectations and measures of the world with what's important to you.
2. Dream MTV: Imagine without limits, plan with realism. Stretch your mind, bend your brain. Then bring your creativity into focus. 3. Mind your mission: Do for yourself what you do for your business. Develop a personal mission statement - and do what it takes to make it happen.
3. Mix with those who don't match: Seek out people who are different. They'll have fresh ideas that can help drive your success and enrich your life.
4. Share success: No individual or business can lead or succeed alone. Sharing success sustains success.

The Talent Alliance coordinates career management among some of the nation's largest companies, including DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, and UPS. Before founding the alliance, Galvanek spent nearly 25 years in HR leadership with AT&T.

Robert Dunn

President And CEO, Business
For Social Responsibility
San Francisco, California

The people I consider successful apply ethical values to their lives. Several years ago a group of retired executives, interviewed for an oral-history project, were asked what they wanted to be remembered for. Their responses were very similar: values-related achievements such as developing their people or serving their communities. Later I participated in a series of retreats with business leaders. Success for them -- and for me -- meant being viewed as having integrity and treating others with respect.

BSR's more than 800 members include FedEx, Home Depot, and Starbucks.

Bill Shore

Executive Director, Share Our Strength
Washington, DC

A fundamental ingredient of success is self-interest -- which should be viewed idealistically rather than cynically. It is a powerful motivator and can be extremely effective in getting people and organizations to do good as much as to do well.

We've mobilized thousands of talented people to fight hunger not by making them feel guilty or bad about themselves, but by giving them opportunities to express themselves on behalf of a worthwhile cause.

When altruism is selfish, it becomes sustainable -- perhaps forever.

SOS has distributed nearly $30 million to anti-hunger organizations in its 12 years of operation.