The 10 Laws of Enduring Success - Kristy Lyons

Bartiromo, Maria, and Whitney, Catherine. The 10 Laws of Enduring Success. New York: Crown Business, 2010.

The 10 Laws of Enduring Success outlines ten attributes that make an individual successful and how those laws have been demonstrated in many company leaders. Bartiromo’s ten laws include: self-knowledge, vision, initiative, courage, integrity, adaptability, humility, endurance, purpose and resilience. Self-knowledge allowed Jack Welch to successfully run General Electric because he embraced his employees’ individuality and ideas. Vision allows leaders to have the foresight to look ahead and solve the next problem that may arise. An example of initiative is William Morris, who founded Creative Artists Agency after he was a driver for Paul Kohner of The Kohner Agency. While driving Kohner, Morris would listen in on meetings and deals, and get to know many people: Morris took the initiative to learn about the workings of agency by any means. The courage chapter states that in order to be a leader one must possess courage and confidence in their decisions. People won’t follow someone who is not self-assured about what they are doing. Integrity involves keeping one’s core values front and center in the business or organization. Bollinger Insurance CEO Jack Windolf felt as if his employees were undercompensated. After receiving $500,000 in deferred compensation, he wrote a $1,000 check to each of his 454 employees. Adaptability is crucial: those most adaptable to change are the ones who survive. General Electric spends over $1 billion a year on leadership training and education for their employees. Humility is important, as there is a humanizing factor in leaders who are able to laugh at themselves. Hubris can be detrimental to a company if the leader only surrounds himself with people who always say “yes.” In terms of endurance, leaders should never demonstrate anxiety to the team. Great leaders give their followers purpose by making sure employees are healthy, creative and fulfilled. Resilience states that crises should create motivation and bring people together to work for success.

Maria Bartiromo offers a great approach to leadership. As I was reading, I came across various qualities of leaders that we named in class. While reading the section on purpose, Maslow’s hierarchy was discussed. Dr. Deepak Chopra from the Kellogg School of Management states that for a business to be successful the team should be the focus and there should not be a distinction between personal and business life. Basic needs such as survival, safely, achievement and belonging would help everyone perform at their highest potential. Bartiromo also employs a few characteristics of the learning organization theory. Two of the chapters focus solely on vision and purpose. She states that is it important for the leader to have a vision and a purpose that is shared among the team or employees, which is similar to the beliefs of this particular theory.

Without hesitation I would recommend this book to other Public Relations students. I love that Bartiromo breaks the laws of leaderships and success into ten distinct chapters that give various examples and advice from the world’s most successful individuals ranging from Oprah Winfrey, to Jack Welsh of General Electric and Condoleezza rice. Maria Bartiromo is an anchor for CNBC so many of her personal experiences relate to her job in communications. Along with this, Bartiromo relates to the college audience in many areas of the book. She describes her experiences of her job search after college offers advice about steps to obtaining your dream job. A main factor that she stresses throughout the book is that people should take money out of the equation and choose the careers and organizations that ultimately make you happy.