The Shortcut to Success

I just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers: The Story of Success”.  I am happy to report that I have finally found the equivalent to the Fountain of Youth; the shortcut to success. 

Our blog is dedicated to creating happiness and building business value.  However, I only occasionally remember to really think about success itself.  This is important as happiness is a close relative to success.  If you are careful about how you define success then becoming successful can lead to a sense of happiness.

In one of my prior periods of reflection, I realized I had never defined the word success.  This led to a series of blog posts relating to John Wooden’s definition of success and his Pyramid of Success.

http://buddhaceo.blogspot.com/2011/05/like-minds-lessons-from-wizard.html
http://buddhaceo.blogspot.com/2011/05/coach-woodens-pyramid-of-success-part-1.html
http://buddhaceo.blogspot.com/2011/05/coach-woodens-pyramid-of-success-part-2.html

But here is the really interesting part; Malcolm’s book does NOT contain the shortcut to success.  Quite the contrary really, he actually describes how much effort goes into success.  Malcolm’s research sets the bar very high.  It turns out that we need 10,000 hours of perfect practice to reach the mastery of a single subject.

However, Malcolm’s book does get credit for being the inspiration for my discovery of the shortcut to success.  A light bulb turned on as I contemplated the requirement of 10,000 hours of prefect preparation for skill mastery. 

I realized this is why people will pay for franchises, cookbooks, teachers, coaches and tutors.  These are the ways we pay for a shortcut to success by leveraging off of the mastery that someone else achieved the hard way by putting in their 10,000 hours.

So the path to success is simple.  Start by defining success for you.  Then either put in the 10,000 hours of perfect practice that is required to achieve the success you define or purchase a shortcut through the use of someone else’s’ system, recipe, pay for coaching, etc. 

So all of this leads me to the following question: If you are a business owner, a member of a management team or if you aspire to become either one, have you put in your 10,000 hours of perfect practice as it relates to the business of business? 

Not practicing what your business does, but practicing how to run a business that does what you do.  Being a plumber and managing a plumbing business require two very different skill sets.

Our goal at Buddha CEO is to help your Company create happiness and build business value.  So if your organization defines success in this way; we hope you consider this blog as part of your shortcut to success.

Please post a comment relating to your favorite recipe for success.

We would love to hear from you!