MBA 5680 – Organizational Behavior and Group Dynamics

Sample Book Review

by Melody Wollan, PhD, PHR

Introduction

The business publishing community has provided many tomes with career advice and developing potential of MBAs and business leaders. One of the most credible works in recent years is “Maximizing success: Changing the 12 behavior patterns that keep you from getting ahead” by James Waldroop, PhD and Timothy Butler, PhD (published in 2000 by Doubleday). Both authors are directors of MBA Career Development at HarvardBusinessSchool and have aided and supported the careers of legions of famed Harvard grads during their tenure and as consultants and developers of an interactive career-assessment program, CareerLeader, that is noted as being used by over 100 corporations and MBA programs worldwide.

There is an implicit suggestion by the business community that looking at successes provides a model for making managerial and career decisions. While there is some truth to that, many times there are simply too many unknown factors to adequately capture all the nuisances of economic, personal, organizational, contextual, consumer, strategic, political, personnel, and the interaction of all of these elements in achieving success at one point in time (e.g., a Baldrige Award) or being successful over a longer span of time (e.g., Jack Welch’s success at General Electric).

Audience of this book

One of the major contributions that Waldroop and Butler make is their decision to approach success in terms of being successful versus what they call “maximum success”. Any one of us might be considered or consider ourselves successful depending upon the criteria to which we are being compared. For example, I’m married, with a PhD, am provided with economic stability and a satisfying salary, have a desirable work schedule and much autonomy. For most people who know me, they consider my personal and academic accomplishments “success”. However, within my profession, I’ve so far been competent and recognized for my teaching, am generally considered a hard and cooperative community member in my profession both locally and nationally, but have not achieved what I feel is adequate accomplishment in the area of research productivity. I have had moderate encouragement of my research development with the success of finishing my dissertation and twelve conference presentations involving research as author or coauthor over the span of seven years, but have yet to successful complete a manuscript for journal publication, a clear expectation in my professional track. In fact, in four years I need to have at least four journal publications, and as I read “Maximum Success” I find some of the guidance for achieving my maximum success might lie in turning around some of my individual level behaviors.

Importantly, Maximum Success needs to be recognized for what it is not, and what it is prior to reading it. This is not a book to profile only top executives in America today such that pieces of each can be emulated and result in your success. It is not at the organizational level, and does not take into account organizational strategies or economics. Those looking for immediate answers to solving their organizational dilemmas of addressing sales, customer demands, or improvement of teams will be disappointed. Instead, this book is for the professional that reaches a point of frustration of recognizing that they have a career goal, objective or success point that they are currently not meeting. This book is for people who are achievers: those who have been outstanding or excelled at some point in their career but find themselves suddenly “B players” (a phrased commonly recognized in public press in 2003 as identified in USA Today (9/9/2003), Harvard Business Review (June 2003), Time Magazine (9/15/2003)). This book is for “B players” who want to be back on the “A” team in their organizations and have somehow lost their way or need to regroup to meet the changing demands on employees.

Approach and Content

In this book, they have designed two parts. Part I addresses the “12 behaviors that can hold you back”, and Part II looks at “The psychological issues behind the 12 behavior patterns”.

The 12 behaviors that can hold you back are identified as follows:

  1. Never feeling good enough
  2. Seeing the world in black and white
  3. Doing too much, pushing too hard
  4. Avoiding conflict at any cost
  5. Running roughshod over the opposition
  6. Rebel looking for a cause
  7. Always swinging for the fence
  8. When fear is in the driver’s seat
  9. Emotionally tone-deaf

10. When no job is good enough

11. Lacking a sense of boundaries

12. Losing the path

Have they forgotten anything? It doesn’t seem likely. I feel this list is more than comprehensive to collecting a litany of all the mistakes we might make along our career paths at one time or another.

In an effort to provide an example of the book, and not a report on its entirety, I’ll focus in on their approach to one of these behaviors that I see represented in my own professional choices in my struggles to achieve “maximum” success: “When No Job is Good Enough”.

In this section, the authors make a distinction between individuals who swing for the fence every time and those who sit in the bleachers and talk about how if they wanted to pick up the bat and play, they could hit a home run too. Succinctly and I believe accurately, it is suggested that those who are unwilling to engage fully by actions (rather than just words) are paralyzed by fear of failing and the shame that they associate with failure. In other words, these individuals may appear to be successful if they wanted to and show much potential for maximum success. They excel in short-term projects with immediate gratification and feedback, but when it comes to longer-term commitments, the potential for failure at some point is greater than the perceived reward. The authors profile Ann and her background, career ladder, and intersperse other brief examples individuals they’ve counseled that embody this mentality. A discussion of the dynamics of the pattern, including psychological impacts of childhood dynamics and how the “coulda-beens” develop over time is presented, and then analyzed in more depth with Ann’s career choices and how the authors provided her guidance to break the pattern.

This second part is a more academic approach, but one that provides a lot of credibility in separating this book from the many others with career advice that are available in the marketplace and that make this book a timeless classic. For many authors and consultants, it is easier to describe and identify the problem than it is to prescribe some type of adjustment or understanding that can be addressed. One of the elements that I found as a strength, that I am sure other academics active in the research of careers and psychology could argue against, is that Waldroop and Butler are very concise and focused suggesting only four psychological issues, when in fact, I’m sure the reality could suggest three-, four-, or even five-fold that many theories that could be incorporated. In their brevity and limited scope, Waldoop and Butler have done the reader a favor.

The four elements that they perceive as providing solution and recommendations for those that want to achieve “maximum” success are:

  1. Taking others’ perspectives: trying to see and recognize others’ viewpoints in interpreting and taking action as way of addressing your own response)
  2. Coming to terms with authority: recognizing that everyone has a boss and people to whom they are responsible and learning to work with authority and not reject it outright on principle of wanting to be autonomous. Compounded with element 1 (taking others’ perspectives), this helps the reader recognize that authorities that make demands on us might be balancing our own needs with the needs of authors)
  3. Using power: not only to “get your way”, but using it and knowing when to compromise and picking your issues appropriately.
  4. Looking in the mirror: Examining your self-image: Self-assessment of strengths and weaknesses, and making honest assessments about what is achievable, what types of lens of experience and messages that we filter our own actions and reactions through.

Conclusion

I found this book to be written in a narrative style that could be segmented into smaller sections for quick reading (one chapter at a time), or out of order to meet what I identified as most important and relevant to me. The examples of “ordinary” people, ages 25-55 for the most part, provided me with plenty of opportunities to identify myself, or people I knew who might be struggling to achieve “maximum” success. While many people find their careers stimulating, balanced with work and family, and security, this book provides some suggestions and examples for those of us who feel successful, but still vulnerable to not being the “best” and wanting that type of continued positive reinforcement through our professional lives.

This is a book that I have owned for five years, and find that a once year “booster”, particularly when my annual evaluation or opportunity for self-reflection arrives on my desk, by reading a few chapters of the book helps me reflect on my past activities and what I might alter to be more successful in the next year. It is part strategy, part therapist and counselor, and coach, and also provides the reader with a sense of reality of the here-and-now, rather than lofty aspirations. While not dumbed down to the extent to provide the reader with “10 steps of what you need to do”, it does offer at least three to four nuggets of personalized strategy for behavior modification to providing daily reinforcement leading to “maximum” success, and is a book I believe could be a classic on your bookshelf throughout your career.

Reference

Waldroop, J., & Butler, T. (2000). Maximum success: Changing the 12 behavior patterns that keep you from getting ahead. New York: Doubleday.