Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life - Softcover

Nash, Laura; Stevenson, Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0471714402 ISBN 13: 9780471714408

Publisher: Wiley, 2005

Synopsis

Just Enough P

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Success is clearly about more than making money, but it’s also not just about happiness. You can have wealth and pleasure and still feel dissatisfied on many fronts. What, then, is real success and what does it take to achieve it in lasting terms that benefit you and others? How do you prepare your children and your business to succeed on the goals they most deeply value and have a reasonable chance of obtaining?

Just Enough argues that these questions have a new urgency today. People are caught up in success approaches that seem to never quite keep up with all the moving targets around them.

Dissatisfied and confused, they want something more from success, but don’t know how to go about it. They become stressed out, indecisive, or even detached from their own values and talents.

In a thought-provoking examination of high achievers in business and other professions, authors Nash and Stevenson argue that the single greatest cause of today’s success frustration can be traced to the failure to understand that real success requires skill in the art of complex decision-making about noncomparable goals. Many success advisories tell you how to go after one big thing, and many organizations mistakenly try to motivate success on these terms. Drawing on new in-depth interviews, hundreds of case studies, and a survey of top executives, the authors conclude that even for the most driven, success is really measured on four distinct, irreducible categories representing conflicting human needs: happiness, achievement, significance, and legacy. Unless you know how to "score" in each category repeatedly in every aspect of your life–family, work, and community–you aren’t really going after a success that will feel worthwhile and lasting.

Just Enough presents a powerful framework for identifying and distinguishing the most important definers of success in your life and your business. It advances a step-by-step "kaleidoscope strategy" for addressing each of your goals in a way that doesn’t shortchange the others. This process is not a formula for getting you everything you wish from one goal. It’s about learning how to sort and scale and switch your energies to focus the right skills and perspectives on each of the four categories of success sequentially. With this diagnostic you can calibrate your activities to do just enough for today and for the future. You don’t continue to waste your energies focusing on one thing until you hit a wall of dissatisfaction. It’s a critical tool not only for individuals, but also for businesses seeking to achieve lasting greatness.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Just Enough

"One of the things society needs most right now is a reasoned sense of what is enough. This book will advance the dialogue of this important topic for individuals and their communities."
—Hon. Barbara H. Franklin, President and CEO, Barbara Franklin Enterprises former U.S. Secretary of Commerce

"Rarely do we find a book for leaders that addresses all aspects of leadership success. Just Enough does just this in a powerful and inspiring way. From values and self-fulfillment, high performance and results, to legacy, the last great gift of a leader, Just Enough delivers a profound new resource for leaders everywhere."
—Frances Hesselbein Chairman, Leader to Leader Institute

"Just Enough will make you think about how you define success in your life in entirely new and creative ways. If you are searching for the kind of meaningful success that endures, read this well-researched and well-written book."
—Ralph S. Larsen, former Chairman and CEO, Johnson & Johnson

"Just Enough provides insights and guideposts for dealing with the complex pressures for performance in today's workplace environment. Readers of this impressive book will have a better understanding of what success should mean and how to go about achieving it. Best of all, Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson use their experience and research to provide concrete examples and helpful 'quick points' summaries."
—Thomas W. Dunfee Joseph Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility in Business The Wharton School

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0471714402
• ISBN 13: 9780471714408
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320