In the end, success comes down to three things. If you think the first one is luck, sorry! That would be a platitude.
Okay, fine, of course luck matters. It matters in the big-big things, like where and when you’re born, your health, your class, your race. But it also helps with the small stuff, like when the person sitting next to you in Row 45 on the Tampa-Chicago flight loves your product and places the order that saves you from bankruptcy.
But luck is random by definition. As a business academic who studies career trajectories, I’ve found long-term success is, aside from luck, a function of PIE. It refers to the quality of your:
- Personal relationships
- Ideas
- Execution
Let me explain.
1. Personal relationships
Good news, I’m not going to tell you to network. I hate networking. It’s mercenary and phony, and it doesn’t work.
Instead, invest your time and energy making friends with all sorts of people, and lots of them, at work and out, with no expectation of anything in return. They may be able to help you someday, or maybe not, but if and when they do, their help will have more impact than any networking contact.
My dear friend, Hollis, is the publisher of my latest book, “Becoming You.” Would she have acquired my manuscript if she hadn’t liked it? No, of course not, and our friendship would have been just fine. But you’ve also never seen an easier, faster book deal brokered. The lawyers had nothing to do. Poor them!
Friends, real ones, are what make business go. And the better friends you have, the better it will go for you
2. Ideas
You don’t need a lot of ideas. But I’ve never met a successful person who didn’t have a few really good ones over the long arc of their career.
What is a “good” idea? Well, for one thing, it’s original. I’m thinking of Jeff Bezos when it dawned on him that he didn’t need to sell just books online. He could sell anything.
Luckily for the rest of us, an original idea doesn’t have to blow up the economy. It can be as small as replacing a bureaucratic process with a clean, simple one. Or a marketing activation that bumps sales 3% or a design tweak that makes an industrial product 5% more efficient.
I know a car salesman who, in his first year on the job, doubled his location’s sales by bringing a new question to his teammates. When a customer throws a lowball price at you, he said, instead of negotiating off the bat, ask, “Can you help me understand how you came up with that number?”
He runs the place now.
3. Execution
This is the most underrated success-driver of the PIE triad — which is ridiculous, because any manager in the world will tell you they’d kill for a team member who gets you-know-what done.
In my class at NYU, every MBA student must go through 360 Feedback, an evaluation tool that gathers input from former and current coworkers, bosses, and employees, and aggregates it into a report.
Sarah, a student, reviewed her 360 results in class and immediately booked double office hours. When we met up, she was in tears. “Professor Welch, I need you to teach me how to be a leader,” she said, “because my 360 Feedback results are horrifying.” Dear Reader, it was a WTF moment for me, since my reaction to her results had been, “Nice!”
The issue was that Sarah’s 360 results had shown her to be kind of low on leadership traits. But every single piece of feedback suggested that Sarah was SEAL Team Six when it came to getting projects over the finish line. Her execution was perfect, precise, and invisible. As a leader myself, it made me feel faint with ardor.
I needed to make sure. Did Sarah want to be a leader? There was a long pause, then: “Honestly? No!” Strategy bored her, she told me. Vision statements made her gag. Just tell me what needs to be done and get out of my way.
“Why don’t you just aim to have a career as a COO?” I asked. “Every CEO in the world will be in a cage match over you.”
“But we’re supposed to become leaders,” she protested. “That’s why we go to business school.”
Ah, but no, I reminded her. You are in business school — you are in life — to become you.
Becoming the most successful you
My Becoming You methodology helps you answer: “What should I do with my life?”
The PIE theory drives much of the information Becoming You digs to unearth: how you relate to people, how your brain works, and how you show up in the world.
It’s literally set up to set you up to succeed, based on how I believe success actually happens.
Suzy Welch is an award-winning NYU Stern School of Business professor, acclaimed researcher, popular podcaster and three-time NYT best-selling author, most recently with “Becoming You: A Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career.” A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Business School, Dr. Welch is a frequent guest of the Today Show and an op-ed contributor to the Wall Street Journal. She serves on the boards of public and private companies, and is the CEO of Becoming You Media.
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