The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers: The Guide for Achieving Success and Satisfaction

by James M. Citrin and Richard A. Smith

Book Overview

What is different about the careers of people like Lou Gerstner, the acclaimed, recently retired chairman and CEO of IBM? Or Senator Elizabeth Dole, Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig, and Tom Freston, chairman... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400047943
• ISBN13: 9781400047949
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Crown Business
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Nice guys can finish first--if they play their cards right!

This is the most hopeful career book I have ever read. Mr. Citrin and Mr. Smith are recuiters for Spencer Stuart, and when I first started reading I thought the book might turn into a printed infomercial like many management books. Not so! This book presents the facts about how virtuous women and men move up in the world. The book takes a very upbeat tone about your potential for success. If there is any infomercial quality about it, it is the obvious interest the authors have of working with great talent like you--but I think they really are looking for good people. They are anxious to encourage the nice guys and nice gals to aspire to greatness. The best chapter in my opinion is about practicing benevolent leadership. With me they are preaching to the choir as I have drawn the same conclusions about promoting other people's best interests in a leadership role. They point out practical examples of those who succeed by this rule as well as the sad fate of those who violate it. The other principles are excellent too, and they have a good combination of research and anecdotal evidence to back them up. I would not consider this to be a theory or opinion book, but more of a case study book. The authors have long experience observing executives first-hand, and in this book they distill their knowledge of how a large number of outstanding people moved up in the world. And the great thing is--all their advice is positive and edifying! This is the one book that I have given to other people to help them in their careers. You ought to order a case and hand one out to everyone in your organization.

Five Patterns and going from Extraordinary to the Optimal.

The Five patterns described in this book combined with the case studies, provide worthy guidelines for an extraordinary career. I was impressed with the specific information about each pattern, and used my highlighter pen several times (a great sign!) I also recommend integration of Optimal Thinking into this equation as the mental tool to bring out the best in people - yourself, employees, affiliates and customers -- and to optimize your productivity and profitability. Today's competitive optimized marketplace is creating and supporting optimizers and is no longer hanging on to the old paradigm of managers and employees. I feel compelled to recommend Optimal Thinking: How to Be Your Best Self in addition to this great book.

How to Succeed Without Machiavelli

Historically, have modern-day executives with extraordinary careers clawed their way to the top? As a group, have they manifested a pattern of ingratiating themselves to their superiors through sycophancy and obsequiousness?The very fortunate answer for those of us seeking truly satisfying, inspiring careers is a resounding "no"!Whether you're a job seeker or a company veteran, you will gain concise, practical insights about seemingly paradoxical behaviors and thinking that have fueled the upward trajectory of extraordinary executives. The five patterns are: (1) understanding one's worth and value in business; (2) practicing benevolent leadership with one's subordinates; (3) overcoming the permission paradox or overt restrictions set forth by the organization; (4) differentiating oneself using the "20/80 principle of performance"; and (5) finding the right long-term fit, in terms of one's career strengths, passion, and cultural affinities. At first glance, it's easy for one to be cynical about any book that claims to understand and outline "success". This is particularly true of business books written with well-honed, self-congratulatory hindsight, such as the once-popular "Mean Business" by "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap. (I'll assume you know what happened to him.)In contrast, "5 Patterns" summarizes observations from over 2000 completed surveys, and profiles numerous superstar executives from widely varying business spectrums. The end result is that "5 Patterns" concisely identifies behaviors and thinking that all of us can strive to achieve--get this--without compromising who we are. In fact, the book's profiled executives must frequently overcome their organizations' conventional wisdom (and risk professional hara-kiri) to succeed.Sure, we could all take risks and hope for the best. But what makes this book unique is that the authors profile executives who know how to adeptly balance all five patterns simultaneously and therefore achieve extraordinary success.

A first rate change agent...

I don't usually care for business advice books. I find most of them dull, and they often give advice that is either outdated or obvious. In addition, I am a landscaper, which makes a lot of the corporate advice meaningless for me. This book, however, has helped me make some big changes, and most of them weren't things I would have come up with on my own. Citrin and Smith surveyed 16,000 top executives, and interviewed many of these people in depth, to try to isolate the attributes and habits that make for a successful career. They found five patterns that every truly sought-after person fit.The two patterns that were the most helpful to me have been Practicing Benevolent Leadership, or as they put it, not clawing your way to the top but being carried there; and Not Micromanaging your career but Macromanaging, which means focusing on the things you are best at and have a passion for, so you can be extraordinary at what you do, instead of focusing on bringing your weak points up to snuff and being average at everything.After only two weeks of putting this to practice, I have incredibly enough gotten more great jobs and connections than before. I stopped trying to do the jobs that I felt I should gain experience at, but didn't excite me, and instead passed them on to some other landscapers who do really enjoy that kind of work. I have gotten two jobs from the people I have been referring my work to, and they are just the kind of jobs that do thrill me!Life also seems a lot more pleasant since I have given up struggling to learn about the aspects of landscaping that don't interest me, and have been learning more about the aspects that do.All in all, this is a very useful book, with simple ideas that are easy to implement, but can be hard to figure out for yourself.

The Best Book About You That You?ll Read This Year

The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers is the best book about you that you'll read this year. Written by James Critin and Richard Smith, both veterans of high-powered executive searches at Spencer Stuart, the book is a down-to-earth look at what separates the ordinary from the extraordinary in the business world. Critin and Smith have analyzed years of professional observations and over a thousand surveys from proven extraordinary executives and distilled their findings into five common denominators: The Five Patterns.The great thing about the patterns is that they're not attributes. They're behaviors. The book wouldn't be worth too much, after all, if it simply said "extraordinary executives are all really smart." In fact, Critin and Smith argue the opposite: that intelligence isn't a great predictor of success. Instead, they isolate key behaviors common to most of the men and women they studied. One of my favorite patterns is "Overcoming the Permission Paradox." Critin and Smith note that truly great people take advantage of (or create) opportunities to empower themselves; you won't hear Lou Gerstner say "I was never given an opportunity to succeed."Another key pattern is "Practice Benevolent Leadership." They note that extraordinary people don't climb to the top; they're carried there by the people who work for them (I've paraphrased). You're probably recognizing wisdom you already knew, here. The interesting thing about this book is that you'll see yourself in its pages: in some places you'll say "I do that!" and in others "I don't!" I found the fact that this book reached me so effectively to be very compelling. I found many lessons I could use in this book, and it made me look critically at a number of my behaviors, or lack of behaviors.The fact that The Five Patterns comes with a lot of credibility helps it reach the reader. Critin and Smith have laced this book with examples, research, personal observations, interview excerpts and references. When they use an example, they show it as from an executive who's not only successful, but often a household name, and they credit him by name. I was excited by the fact that they had so much material directly from these "extraordinary executives" that came from interviews that were conducted specifically and exclusively for this book.The Five Patterns is concise, credible, prescriptive and specific. And gratefully, it was very different from the same old reprocessed career advice you can get in a thousand other places. Page for page it's the most valuable book I've read this year, at the very least. I'm rating it five stars and I'd recommend it unconditionally to anyone in business that wants to spend some time nurturing his or her career.