This is an old book on my bookshelf that i recently dust off and re-read.
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There holds the basic premise that there are a handful of workplace habits that often keep
successful people from making the next big leap forward in their career. The author, Marshall Goldsmith, seeks to identify those habits and help you to overcome them so you can make that next big leap in whatever you’re planning to do with your life. While this book has a heavy skew towards management, there is a lot of meat here that applies no matter what you’re doing. Let’s take a look.
Section One: The Trouble With Success
Whenever someone experiences success in the workplace, they usually get a very positive feeling out of it, and this generally results in a net positive for the person. Their self-esteem goes up and they begin to have more confidence in their abilities. However, this only goes so far: often, when a person has a string of successes, they begin to adopt a handful of beliefs that aren’t necessarily true. They begin to believe that they are more responsible than they actually are for the success of projects and they begin to believe that their value is much higher than reality actually shows.
This is a human failing, one that anyone with some measure of success can fall prey to. I’ve fallen prey to it myself – more than once, I’ve managed to make myself believe that I was somehow superior simply because I performed my individual role well. This is a dangerous thing to ever believe, even if it happens to be true. It alters your own behavior in a lot of ways and sets you up for failure, not for success.
Change The Learning Curve 