Based on a landmark twenty-year study of 115 members of the Harvard Business School's Class of 1974, this vital and important book describes how the globalization of markets and competition is altering career paths, wage levels, the structure and functioning of corporations, and the very nature of work itself.
THE NEW RULES INCLUDE:
New Rule #1: Conventional career paths through large corporations no longer lead to success as they once did;
New Rule #4: The greatest opportunities have shifted away from professional management in manufacturing to consulting and other service industries;
New Rule #7: Success requires high personal standards and a strong desire to win.<
Stephen R. Covey Author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People An absolutely fascinating account of the...emerging...paradigm shift in the workplace.<
Rosabeth Moss Kanter Harvard Business School, author of When Giants Learn to Dance An essential guide for leaders of the future and an inspirational call to embrace more entrepreneurial and personally fulfilling careers.<
Georgette Mosbacher CEO, Georgette Mosbacher Enterprises, author of The Feminine Force After 20 Years in the corporate and small business worlds, I thought I knew everything about succeeding in today's tough market. I was wrong. Drop everything and read this book. It will change your life.<
Chapter 1
IS THE AMERICAN DREAM DEAD?
They grew up in an era of great expansion in the the United States, a time that gave renewed life to the concept of the American dream. Kevin Johnson was one of them. Born near Chicago on March 27, 1946, he was raised in an environment where upward mobility was the order of the day. In 1954, Kevin's father was promoted from salesman to sales manager. The family moved out of their older two bedroom home located just ten minutes from Comiskey Park and into a four bedroom split-level in Winnetka with a two car garage, a barbecue patio, and a real backyard. The economy was a mighty engine back then. Gross national product in the United States increased in real (1992) dollars from 213.4 billion in 1946 to over a trillion in 1968, the year that Kevin and a group of early baby boomer peers graduated from Stanford. During this period, American businesses set the standard for the world and were exceptionally successful. No less than 75 of the world's 100 largest revenue-producing industrial firms in 1955 were U.S. based.
America's global domination was already slipping when Kevin completed college and went to work for Motorola, although few of us noticed the downward trend. After four years of work in the electronics industry, Johnson found another wave that was still on the rise -- the movement toward MBA education. In September of 1972, he came to Boston and enrolled as a student at Harvard. Two years later he finished the program and, despite the recession, received four good job offers. When he started work in June of that year, he felt on top of the world.
Kevin's optimism was fed both by his own early history and by the business school experience. In Boston, he and his classmates were told many times and in many ways that some of them were destined to be very important people in the world of industry. This promise of professional success from an MBA education was even confirmed by a Fortune article that appeared as they were taking their last exams. Focusing on HBS graduates from 1949, the title of the piece was "The Class the Dollars Fell On." The subheading told readers that in twenty-five years, the "Class of 1949 has risen to power, prestige, and riches." Those pictured in the article included Jim Burke, the then President of Johnson & Johnson, Sumner Feldberg, the Chairman of Zayre, Vincent Gregory, Jr., the President of Rohm & Haas, William Hanley, Jr., the President of Elizabeth Arden, Peter McColough, the Chairman of Xerox, M. G. O'Neil, the President of General Tire, and John Shad, the Vice Chairman of E. F. Hutton.
I doubt if any of us back then fully recognized that the economy was beginning to undergo a very fundamental change. After twenty-five to thirty-five years of growth and prosperity -- the period in which the Class of' 49 built their careers -- the environment was suddenly becoming more global, more competitive, faster moving, more unstable, and a lot tougher. Real GNP increases slowed greatly. The net result was a huge decline in the acceleration of the living standard for the average U.S. citizen.
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