The New Psychology of Success by Dweck - Book Report/Review Example

?Summer Reading Paper. This paper reviews three books which deal with the themes of transformation, motivation and ethics in some quite diverse ways.The first, entitled “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” (Dweck, 2008) is a self-help book which explores the connection between how people think about themselves, and the success, or lack of success, that they experience in all areas of their lives. The second book, entitled “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t (Collins, 2001) takes the perspective of the whole company, and suggests the underlying reasons why some companies are good, while others achieve an even higher level of performance and become really great. By studying the performance of selected companies in the past, the author hopes to identify qualities, tips and strategies that leaders can apply to their own companies in order to move them from the lower category into the higher one. The third book, entitled “Man’s Search for Meaning” (Frankl, 2006) is a reprint of a book written ten years after the end of the Second World War, which tells the personal story of a survivor of the Holocaust and draws out some deep philosophical ideas about the meaning of human life. The idea of a “mindset” is very important in the book by Carol Dweck. This concept refers to a whole way of thinking that people usually develop very early in life, and yet it is very important for later life. The key message to remember about this is that people are born with different levels of intelligence, and they experiences all kinds of different influences in their life, some of them good, and some of them very difficult and bad. These are variables that a person does not have much ability to change. Surprisingly, however, the author believes that these circumstantial details are not the most important predictor of success in later life. According to Dweck, it is mindset that is more important than all these variables, because it can make the difference between a person being crushed by bad experiences, or being energized by these same experiences. In other words, it is the way a person deals with all of these experiences that can make such a difference to their life. There are plenty of examples of people who are born with huge advantages, such as wealthy parents, a good education and a nice place to live in, and yet who do not go on to achieve great things in their lives. They might turn to drugs, or decide not to work hard in school, and the result is that they do not achieve the potential that they had as a child. On the other hand there are some people who have a very shaky start in life, like for example Elvis Presley and Lucille Ball who were both regarded as having not much potential in their choice of career in music and acting (Dweck, 2008, p. 28). Dweck maintains that it is their attitude to rejection and failure that made the difference to these two performers. They did not give up when it would have been easy to walk away, and instead they carried on trying to get better, and this is because they had a more flexible mindset that was focused on growth. This is a key point in the book, and it suggests that too many people just believe what other people say about them, and they allow themselves to be classified as a failure. They do not realise that it is possible to turn around these negative criticisms and make them into something positive. They give a person a clue as to what needs to be improved. These insights are quite easy to understand, and they are made very obvious in the book thanks to all the famous examples that Dweck uses to illustrate her points. In real life, however, it is not always easy to put them into practice. It is hard to overcome rejection, and this is something that millions of Americans are being forced to learn in the current worldwide recession. People lose their jobs and have to go out on the market and find a new position. Some young people are finding that they apply dozens of times for starter jobs, but they only receive rejection letters all the time. The important message in the book is that inner strength and determination can overcome these difficulties, so long as a person cultivates a flexible and positive mindset and keeps the idea of growth and success in mind. Setbacks, problems and tragedy can be a trigger for personal growth, and people can use this insight to make the best of their life chances, even when things look bad. This lesson about the powerful role of transformation in a person’s life can be applied also to corporate development. In some ways a company is like a person, because it has a starting point, when the company is “born” and it goes through a life cycle and has to cope with external and internal changes all the time, just like a person. Collins argues that it is not enough for an organization to be good at what it does. This is the minimum that a company should aim for. He states that “the Good is the enemy of the Great” (Collins, 2001, p. 1) which means that it is too easy for moderately successful companies to become complacent. They achieve their initial goals, and then relax, thinking that they have made it in the world, and they just have to carry on like this for ever. This is a disastrous strategy, however, because things in the environment change all the time, and a company needs to always be seeking to grow and become not just good, but better, and in fact it should aim to be a great company. This way at looking at transformation and change is very illuminating, because it explains why so many famous products can suddenly fail and become unpopular, as for example the Toyota brand in the period from 2009 to 2010, which has suffered greatly because so many of their automobiles had to be recalled because of dangerous design faults. There were quality problems with the Toyota product in his period, most likely caused by a drive to cut costs by using cheaper suppliers than before, but the bigger problem was the lack of prompt and decisive action on the part of the leaders of the company (Shirouzu, 2010, p, 4). The top executives relied on their good name carrying them through the bad times, but in fact, they should have been looking for ways to change their own procedures, and go back to producing high quality cars, and taking customer concerns very seriously. In this case there was a refusal to recognize the severity of the problem, and this prolonged the crisis and made the effect on the brand much worse than it needed to be. This is an example of a good company that had become complacent. It could not retain its high status, and so inevitably it began to drift down into mediocre performance. Clearly, there is still some considerable transformation work to be accomplished even in this famous company. It needs to look out for its customers now, and in the future, because all their past accomplishments will mean nothing to customers if the car that they have just bought has dangerous faults in it. The ideas that are presented in Collins’ book about companies overlap quite significantly with those of Dweck. In both cases it is the lack of ambition, determination and perseverance that is problematic. There are differences also, since in the case of the Collins book, because there is an attempt to make comparisons between actual companies, showing how some of them have set themselves much bigger challenges, and in so doing have achieved much greater success than their competitors. The factor of competition is very important in the business world, because of the market forces that exert pressure on every aspect of the business. The book compares companies in such a way as to show that very often it is not the technical challenges that are the most difficult, but the human ones: the need to ensure every worker is on board with the company plans, and the need for crisis resolution rather than a blaming culture which destroys people and creates factions and divisions within the company. Collins advises that big changes take place through a lot of small steps, so that it looks like nothing much is happening in the beginning, but after a time the momentum grows, and the transformation happens. This is an encouraging way to view the process of change in the world of business and management, because it often seems like a long job with no immediate results. The book that makes the strongest and most memorable point is the one by Viktor Frankl on the experiences that he and his family suffered in concentration camps under Nazi German rule. The stories of those who suffered imprisonment, hard labor, and in many cases also death due to illness or deliberate genocide are both personal and very moving. There is an important lesson here about the value of human life, and the danger of totalitarian systems that can take control of a nation and trample on the rights of ordinary citizens. It is interesting, however, to read also about the longer term implications of such severe historical events as are described in this book. Many people might think that Frankl would be entirely justified in wanting revenge against the perpetrators of these terrible crimes, and certainly no-one would be surprised if he displayed some negative reactions and longer term bitterness about the loss of his family, including his much loved wife and unborn child. These are twists of fate that might destroy many people, giving them a sense of hopelessness and despair, and yet some people find the inner strength to overcome these events, and move on with greater wisdom and an ability to put the past behind them. These three books all suggest that there are some ethical issues involved in managing oneself, and in managing other people and companies. Many books on Human Resources Management use the market competition model in discussions about recruitment, and some even suggest that that companies are “competing in the war for talent” (Harvard Business School Press, 2002, p. 87). Even in books which recognize the need for transformation in companies, there is often an emphasis on the goals of the organization, as for example is stated in one HRM handbook: “the biggest challenge for HR professionals today is to help their respective organizations succeed” (Ulrich et al., 2009, p. 5). If it is taken too far, this kind of goals-oriented thinking tends to regard people as objects, or in system terms “inputs” which are to be ruthlessly selected, and then retained or rejected in an endless struggle for competitive “outputs.” The human element can be forgotten in this way of thinking, and indeed Frankl describes how dehumanizing it was to be forced to have a number sewn into clothing, or even tattooed onto the skin, so that guards could manage prisoners without any personal names. One of the great achievements of Frankl’s book has been, in my opinion, to remind everyone how important it is to retain an ethical and responsible attitude towards other human beings at all times. Every individual has potential to develop and change, and this includes even colleagues who might appear to be performing badly, and this means that companies have an ethical responsibility to offer training and support to their staff, before considering the more extreme option of firing people in order to maintain profit levels. The more difficult the market becomes, the more likely it is that companies will forget this critical message, and opt for decisions which can have devastating effects on their staff, both those who are removed, and those who stay on. There are humane and caring ways to make HRM changes, and this book shows how important it can be for people to have a helping hand to turn even bad experiences into an opportunity for learning and finding new horizons. This message is very important in a period of recession, and in my opinion the business needs need to be balanced with the human needs of the members of the organization, so that they both grow in maturity. Frankl’s book consists of some detailed narrative about his own and his family’s war experiences in the first part, but it contains also a section on his theory of “logotherapy” which is a very interesting approach to dealing with past trauma. Instead of using the usual methods of psychology and psychotherapy, which involve looking inwards and looking back at the past, to try and find a way of dealing with them, Frankl suggests a dialogue with a specialist which is much more focused on the future, and on using what has been learned in the past to change the future in a positive way. This future focus does not deny the pain and suffering that has happened, but it shifts the emphasis on to what good things might come in the future. One sentence in Frankl’s book is particularly memorable, and it could be applied to any situation which has caused a person difficulty, whether in work or in personal life: “Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become” (Frankl, 2006, pp, 104-104). For a person, or for an organization, these are wise words, and it should be our am to promote this healthy attitude individually and in our working groups. These three books start out from very different positions and perspectives, but they are united in expressing a deep commitment to the value of each human being, and the need for everyone, at home as well as in the workplace, to take responsibility for developing themselves. Those who are in a leadership position have even more responsibility, such as the need to create opportunities and assistance for those who, for whatever reason, might be inclined to resist change and remain in a rigid and fixed mindset. One of the consequences of putting the ideas of these three books together is to reveal the connections that exist between growth, performance enhancement, and transformation. In all of these areas human factors come into play, and it takes great wisdom to bring about positive change, and keep a person or an organization fit for purpose even in the face of quite difficult external conditions. The ethical dimension is what makes the difference between going through the motions of change, and actually effecting deep and lasting transformation. An organisation has to take its staff with it, and in order to do this, it has to treat them as valued human beings, and not just numbers in a huge and uncaring system. [2528 words] References Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t. New York: Harper Collins, 2001. Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine Books, 2008. Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006. [First published 1959]. Harvard Business School Press. Hiring and Keeping the Best People. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Corp, 2002. Shirouzu, Norihiko. “Inside Toyota, Executives Trade Blame over Debacle.” Wall Street Journal, April 13th 2010. Ulrich, Dave, Allen, Justin, Brockbank, Wayne, Younger, Jon and Nyman, Mark. HR Transformation:Building Human Resources from the Outside In. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Read More