Book Review: What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

C-level guru Marshall Goldsmith wants you to know that all the MBA savvy you can muster won't necessarily take you to the pinnacle of your company. Essential self-assessment and behavioral changes are skills you need to add to your degree program.

MBA Grads: Behave on Your Way to the Top
by Gabby Hyman
gabby.hyman@MBA-business-schools.com
MBA-Business-Schools Book Reviewer

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter, hardcover; 256 pages, by Hyperion, 2007.

All the MBA training in the world won’t take you to the top of your profession if you’re snide or smarmy with your co-workers, have poor communication skills, and won’t admit your mistakes, says CEO mentor Marshall Goldsmith. His sage advice for career executives, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, has soared to fifth on January’s New York Times Business Book Bestseller’s List.

What sets Goldsmith’s tome apart from other guides to upper-echelon success is that it’s brutally frank and relatively free of big business platitudes and self-help mantras. Why throw away your MBA degree investment if your ability to assess your own strengths and shortcomings is weak? Can you admit mistakes to your fellows and guide others with a compassionate, generous hand? Goldsmith says that when it comes to scaling the C-level peaks it’s not so much about your business acumen; it’s about your own integrity.

MBA Savvy and Psychobabble

Top managers need not sugar coat messages to their subordinates, but Goldsmith contends that if they’re incapable of responding to feedback, can’t share credit with others, or are completely single minded about achieving their objectives, they’ll miss the big opportunity. Goldsmith’s book has very little psychobabble to it. Rather, it reveals that you’ll need all your MBA savvy to work the management landscape, along with an honest desire to change poor habits.

According to Goldsmith, it comes down to “transactional flaws” — simple things that you’re supposed to learn at home, not at an MBA degree program — such as saying “thank you,” or “how can I help” and so on. Your most-limiting behaviors are visited at home as well as in the boardroom, so ask your loved ones about your style. Apologizing for mistreatment of others is a skill very few executives will integrate into the professional lives.

In any MBA program, students set examples of charismatic leadership, goal-oriented focus, and cut-throat mentalities. These attributes may suffice in getting you into management but, Goldsmith warns, they won’t take you as far as skills in listening or accepting feedback and criticism with a degree of humility.

About Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter

Marshall Goldsmith is author of 23 books and co-founder of Marshall Goldsmith Partners, a team of top-level executive coaches. He has assisted more than 80 CEOs from in the world’s top corporations. He holds a Ph.D. and teaches executive education at Dartmouth’s Tuck School.

Mark Reiter has collaborated on thirteen previous books. He is a literary agent in Bronxville, New York.

About the Author

Gabby Hyman has created online strategies and written content for Fortune 500 companies including eToys, GoTo.com, Siebel Systems, Microsoft Encarta, Avaya, and Nissan UK.

Posted on March 7, 2007 at 12:55 PM

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