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The Arc Of Ambition: Defining The Paths Of Achievement |  |
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The Arc Of Ambition: Defining The Paths Of Achievement | |
"The Arc of Ambition is a lucid guide to all those who wish to manifest their dreams. The authors offer a perspective that is wise, refreshing, and, most importantly, practical. This book could change your life." -Deepak Chopra
"The Arc of Ambition is truly a road map to success for any individual with a lean toward accomplishment--or a dream of their own. Champy and Norhia's approach is, at once, a practical, step-by-step guide to growth and an entertaining journey through history." -Betty Stanley Beene, President and CEO, United Way of America
作者简介 James Champy is chairman of Cambridge-based Perot Systems Consulting Practice and a pioneer of the reeingineering movement. Co-author of the best-selling Reengineering the Corporation and author of Reengineering Management, he lives in Boston. Nitin Nohria is Richard P. Chapman professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. The author of over seventy-five articles and several books, including the award-winning The Differentiated Network, he lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.
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Amazon.com
Nearly everyone aspires to something--wealth, fame, happiness. But a few people aspire to changing an entire paradigm, the way the Wright Brothers did when they invented a glider with an engine, the way Nelson Mandela did when he endured decades of imprisonment to see his nation transformed, the way Thomas Jefferson did when he doubled the territory of the young U.S. by purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France for less than three cents an acre. All seem like obvious ideas in retrospect, but in fact all appeared quixotic at the time, as wrongheaded as the alchemy that had been attempted for 300 years without ever succeeding in turning a base metal into gold.
In Arc of Ambition, authors James Champy (Reengineering Management, Reengineering the Corporation) and Nitin Nohria see these visionaries as creators, but also recognize two other species of genius: capitalizers, who take great ideas and create great businesses or social movements from them; and consolidators, who lead these businesses or movements into maturity. All three types have the titular "arc of ambition." That is, they start with a great idea, realize it, cope with the success of it (the chapter on overreaching and squandering opportunity includes the cautionary tales of Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton), and decide when and how to turn the product of their imagination over to others. Ultimately, The Arc of Ambition is the entire history of the modern world, of its politics and technology and art. Everything we know and either cherish or loathe starts as someone''s ambition, and ends when the product of someone else''s ambition becomes the dominant model. It''s an interesting and entertaining way to organize the world, to look at the facts with new eyes. In that sense, the authors display the fruits of ambition even as they explain them. --Lou Schuler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In their quest to identify the particular traits of effective leaders, Champy (coauthor of Reengineering the Corporation) and Nohria, a professor at the Harvard Business School, elbowed aside the constraints of the leadership genre, which typically relies on secondhand sources, and actually interviewed many of the people they use as examples. In addition to some of the usual suspects--such as IBM''s Louis Gerstner and computer entrepreneur Michael Dell--they canvass such lesser-known figures as Domain''s Judy George and Dhirubhai Ambani of Reliance Industries, making an effort to span all industries. Beyond reporting on the traits that they believe have contributed to these leaders'' successes (these executives "never violate values"; they "keep control by giving it up"; they "change or die"), Champy and Nohria show how readers can emulate those they''ve singled out, offering such advice as "return to ideas that have worked in the past" and "include specific targets to make sure you remain focused." While neither the traits nor the advice are particularly groundbreaking, the authors'' well-honed and accessible presentation and fresh thumbnail profiles are surprisingly engaging. Agent, Helen Rees. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The Industry Standard
I imagine readers of The Arc of Ambition in rumpled suits sitting in the business section of an airplane on their way to sales conferences in Atlanta or Detroit. They are successful men, but not wildly so, with two-car garages and solid middle-management credentials. They are modern-day Prufrocks: polite, politic, meticulous - easy tools.
But that is not how they see themselves. In their fantasy lives they are smarter than their CEOs, who, they believe, got all the breaks. They have that proverbial "fire in the belly" that tells them they''re destined for great things. It is for these dissatisfied souls flying through the night sky that books like The Arc of Ambition are written.
"Ambition can transform anything. It has tamed continents and launched civilizations, built cathedrals and toppled despots, cured diseases and put men on the moon," we learn early on from authors James Champy, the business consultant famous for cowriting Reengineering the Corporation (2.5 million copies sold), and Nitin Nohria, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. "The human story is fundamentally about people ... rising triumphantly on the arc of ambition."
The authors instruct us that some kinds of ambition are bad, such as the kind that drives Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and those starting Internet companies. "Ambition that focuses only on personal gain does little for society," they write after mentioning those two genocidal murderers. They fear that Internet entrepreneurs "keep starting companies for no better reason than to sell them for incomprehensible sums as fast as possible ... yet another case of dreams aimed at instant gratification."
Setting up "ambition" as central to human achievement is a questionable call, however. One could make an equally broad (and equally spurious) case for human attributes like "cunning," "intelligence," "leadership," "hubris," "zealotry" or "Machiavellian-desire-for-fame." But that would just confuse our reader, who is probably addled by his third gin and tonic. Best to strip greatness down to some simple formula like "managing your ambition = success beyond your wildest dreams," and then tell story after story about ambitious people who made it big:
"By flying the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, Charles Lindbergh triggered the rise of global airlines and foreshadowed space exploration. By charting the human subconscious [sic] for the first time, Sigmund Freud invented psychoanalysis and undoubtedly changed the role of religion. By organizing an assembly line for the first time, Henry Ford launched worldwide auto-mobility ..."
With such half-truths and paper-thin summaries, the reader does not learn anything real about these people. The purpose of such dumbed- down stories is to let these men in loosened ties on airplanes fancy themselves living large like Ford or Lindbergh in the same way they fantasize themselves with the pretty women in the hotel pay-per-view movies.
The fantasies engendered by this book, sadly, are as uninspiring as those sparked by the Playboy Channel. Can anything really be learned from statements like: "Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Ray Kroc and Ted Turner - such people display the courage to act fast and live greatly"?
Maybe for a moment the man in the business-class seat might be inspired and believe: "Yeah, me too." But eventually he has to come back down to earth.
