- True success is about helping others succeed, not helping yourself. Definitely!

Also to this point, Susan Cain notes a migration in self-help books from character to personality, and makes a passing reference to Dale Carnegie’s perennial best-seller. The good news is Dale Carnegie was all about “How to Win Friends and Influence People” through a genuine interest in others and not in the cynically manipulative manner of a corrosive narcissistic CEO. His conversational/blogger style of writing was also very unique for his time. If a born introvert wants to learn “essential extroversion” (and they should), I suggest that book may be all they really need, along with this one.

- To be successful, you have to partner with others and not work in silos. It may depend on the endeavor, but I agree. Apple never would have come to be had Steve Wozniak not worked away on his own on the Apple II after he was done with his day job at HP, as Susan Cain correctly noted; of course, Apple never would have ever existed without Steve Jobs’ vision, unstoppable personality and ability to align an entire ecosystem around the iPod, iPhone and iPad, with massive success.

There are a few messages that I took from the quote, “The doorway to success swings outward”
- True success is about helping others succeed, not helping yourself
- To be successful, you have to partner with others and not work in silos

As a born introvert and learned extrovert, I agree that personality type has nothing to do with success. Some of the smartest and most successful people I know are the quieter ones..

Thanks for starting the conversation.

- Marci
Author, The Operations Blog
http://theoperationsblog.com/

The overused expression “thinking outside the box” takes on new relevance when you think of “the box” as a well-defined (make that well-confined!) problem for which the expected solution must not question those definitions or confinements: “No, NO, NO, Mr. Henry Ford! We told you to develop a faster horse!

And to your point about problem solving as a potential form of status quo, a culture that reveres problem solving while holding innovation in lower regard, and perhaps even as a distraction, ends up “paving over the cow paths.”

I read this recent blog post on problem solving vs. creativity, and how successful innovation is an order of magnitude more valuable than successful problem solving. Suffice to say I found myself nodding my head a lot while reading it.

Thanks again for your blog post and I look forward to reading more.

Particularly striking to me was your reference to problem-solving versus creativity. Normally, many of us think of problem-solving as a good thing. In fact, Weinberg’s model of leadership emphasizes its effectiveness as solving problems. But your reference brought to mind the fact that problem-solving can often be a narrow exercise in maintaining the status quo (but fixing glitches within it), and thus a disempowering innovation killer.

http://blog.cauvin.org/2011/06/debunking-leadership-myths.html