Stairway to Success

Citation

Young, A.P. (1998), "Stairway to Success", Management Decision, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 134-135. https://doi.org/10.1108/md.1998.36.2.134.2

I am a sucker for books that tell me how to organise my time, how to get the perfect job, how to relax, how to fulfil my potential, … Whether I ever take any notice of their advice is another matter! It was therefore with some sense of anticipation that I started reading Stairway to Success. Here was a book that would not only tell me what to do, but also answer the question, what is success?

Certainly, in the introduction the author spends three paragraphs explaining that success can mean different things to different people but concludes that “success consists of finding a happy balance between work and pleasure” and “you won’t really succeed unless the things you accomplish bring you pleasure and satisfaction.” The rest of the book is based on the conjecture that for most people success will be linked to the achievement of specific work oriented outcomes, probably a reasonable assumption for the majority of people likely to read this book.

Nido Qubein is a professional speaker and this comes across strongly in the book’s extremely direct style and content divided into easy to assimilate bite‐sized chunks. The structure is clear and logically organised around six steps ‐ decision, commitment, planning, preparation, execution and recommitment. A number of chapters conclude with exercises e.g. listing your talents, determining your congenial roles, constructing a “gloom‐bug‐killing flypaper” and creating an action plan, in order to encourage an interactive relationship with the reader. The final chapter is a summary of the book’s content, a useful device, and the index is thorough. The layout is attractive and very easy to follow.

Points are made in a punchy way. I particularly liked the section on advertising your goals (p.97). He quotes an anonymous writer as follows:

The codfish lays ten thousand eggs, The homely hen lays one. The codfish never cackles To tell you what she’s done. And so we scorn the codfish While the humble hen we prize, Which only goes to show you That it pays to advertise.

Suggestions are practical and full of common sense and, as Rosabeth Moss Kanter has said, good ideas are always sensible, but not often common!

However, in spite of its good points, I was left with a sense of dissatisfaction by this book. I found it difficult to reach a conclusion as to whom this book was addressed. It could be anybody but might irritate those with a reasonably well rounded education. To allude to well known figures as “a Greek philosopher named Aristotle …” and “Feodor Dostoevsky, the great Russian writer” does seem a little condescending. To deal with time management in two pages, creativity in half a page and cultivating a sense of humour in one paragraph scarcely deals with important issues in any depth. As a woman, I was disappointed at the very small percentage of examples that were about women succeeding and the large number of illustrations drawn from the world of wars and male dominated sports. As a European, it was also difficult to ignore the language used and the high percentage of cases that were culturally specific to the USA.