Howard's Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life's Work [Hardcover]

Eric Sinoway (Author), Merrill Meadow (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 2, 2012

“This work offers wonderful wisdom for navigating the inflection points in our lives.” -- Mehmet Oz, MD

An iconic teacher. A warm friend. A generous mentor.

For more than 40 years, Howard Stevenson has been a towering figure at Harvard Business School: the man who literally defined entrepreneurship and taught thousands of the world’s most successful professionals.

Now – spurred by Stevenson’s heart-stopping brush with death – his student, colleague, and dear friend Eric Sinoway shares the man’s wisdom and inspiration. Through warm and engaging conversations, we hear Howard’s timeless and practical lessons on pursuing both success and fulfillment, beginning with:

• Create a vision of your own legacy through a process called “business planning for life.”

• Be entrepreneurial in driving your career ahead (even if you’re not an entrepreneur).

• Exploit the inflection points in your life – whether “friend,” “foe,” or “silent.”

• Cut risk in tough career and life decisions by shining the “light of predictability” on them.

• Plan for the ripples, not just the splash from your actions and choices.
 
Reading Howard’s Gift is like having a wise, caring friend sit down and say, “Let’s figure all this out together.”

And the deeply personal perspectives from guest contributors – such as CNN correspondent Soledad O’Brien, Teach for America Founder Wendy Kopp, two-time Super Bowl Champion Carl Banks, and legendary MTV Founder Bob Pittman – reinforce the practical lessons in this clear-sighted book that will help readers “define success in their own terms,” and “live a life with no regrets.” 

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This work offers wonderful wisdom for navigating the inflection points in our lives." - Mehmet Oz, MD Professor and Vice Chair, Surgery, New York Presbyterian/ Columbia University

“This book is truly a gift for all those seeking fulfilling careers.” - Wendy Kopp, Founder & CEO, Teach For America

“Beautifully written.  Compelling.  The books should be read – and re-read – by women and men of all ages!” - Henry Rosovsky, Former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

“This is a book of head and heart, of wisdom and emotion.  It is Tuesday’s with Morrie meets What Color is Your Parachute?  Howard’s Gift is a timeless classic.” - Mindy Grossman, Chief Executive Officer, HSN, Inc.

“Howard will go down in business history as the primary promoter of entrepreneurship.  He is both wise and smart.” - Arthur Rock, Venture Capitalist, Arthur Rock & Company

“From a student interested in philosophy to the one pursuing pre-med, from the future attorney to the aspiring executive, Howard’s Gift is a priceless guide for the incoming freshman charting his or her homework – of the graduating student contemplating professional options.  Every freshman should buy it; every graduating student should read it." - Don Bishop, Chief Administrator for Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Scholarships at the University of Notre Dame

"Just as thousands of Harvard Business School students and countless others from around the world have benefitted from Howard Stevenson's wisdom, insight, and example, so will the readers of this very remarkable book." - John McArthur, Dean Emeritus & George F. Baker Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

 

About the Author

ERIC SINOWAY is an entrepreneur and seasoned executive with experience in for-profit, academic, and non-profit organizations. He is the cofounder and president of Axcess Worldwide, a New York-based partnership development company that creates inspired ideas and connects extraordinary brands and people. Axcess works with companies ranging from Rolls Royce and InterContinental Hotels & Resorts to Target and Delta Air Lines. Eric lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 edition (October 2, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1250004241
• ISBN-13: 978-1250004246
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am the President & Co-Founder of Axcess Worldwide, a partnership development company that creates inspired ideas and connects extraordinary brands and people. As an entrepreneur, I am involved in interesting and challenging projects. I am the author of Howard's Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life's Work, a book I wrote in cooperation with iconic Harvard Business School professor, Howard H. Stevenson, which was released by St. Martin's Press in October, 2012. Howard's Gift is an Amazon Best Seller, and has been published in England, United Arab Emirates, India, South Africa, Thailand, China, Germany, Lebanon, Italy, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, and Japan.

My professional experience has entailed leadership positions in the private, non-profit, and academic sectors. I have had the privilege of working with some of the world's leading organizations and most accomplished individuals. I am honored to have been featured on CNN, Talk Radio nationwide, and in USA Today, Fortune Magazine, Harvard Business Review, and a wide variety of other publications worldwide.

Earlier in my career, I led the successful sponsorship program at Cendant, a Fortune 500 company; and I helped Joie de Vivre Hotels conceive a highly regarded development that earned features in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.

Before co-founding Axcess Worldwide with my long-time business partner Kirk Posmantur, I was a senior development officer at Harvard University, where I was a catalyst for a series of large philanthropic gifts from individuals, governments, and organizations worldwide. These accomplishments at Harvard built on experience with other highly visible non-profit organizations. I previously played a leading role in the development of After-School All-Stars - the program founded by Arnold Schwarzenegger to provide after-school programs in 12 U.S. cities. Later, collaborating with entrepreneur and philanthropist, Todd Wagner (who co-founded broadcast.com with Mark Cuban), I helped conceive and lead a national after-school technology initiative called MIRACLES.

I earned my undergraduate degree at Cornell's School of Hotel Administration and my master's at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Take a minute to think about your legacy October 2, 2012

By Slushy

Format:Hardcover

If I say one thing (of many) in support of Howard's Gift, it is that, remarkably, it didn't feel like yet another pull in another direction. You know what I mean - every day, there are 800 things competing for your total and complete attention. And books? Who has time for books! On the recommendation of a friend, I picked up a copy. Reading it felt like a break from the demands of the everyday world to consider what I want and need from my future and career. What are the steps I need to take to achieve the legacy I dream of? Give yourself the permission to stop for a moment and read this insightful book, and I can promise you won't be disappointed.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Clearheaded perspective October 3, 2012

By David Wineberg

Format:Hardcover

The shelf of management guru books is sagging and overburdened with repetitive dross, but room should definitely be made for Howard's Gift, a definite cut above. It's the informally collected thoughts of a Harvard Business School professor who is well respected, well loved, and who walks the walk as well as talking the talk.
The book is structured as a series of life lessons, usually beginning with a quote from Howard, and ending with a profile of a former student or successful executive who exhibits that point. As such, it is filled with pithy quotables and the only way to review it is to highlight some of them that appeal most.
-From his wealth of experience, he tells us that focusing on our own weaknesses is a losing proposition - focus on what works. That will get you farther faster, and be much more satisfying to you and your game plan (if you can afford one).
-Similarly, there's the Hard Work Fallacy - that "determined effort will always overcome an enduring shortcoming". It's what all parents instill in their children. And it's wrong.
-And watch out for the "Magnifiers: folks who shoot arrows at a blank target then draw a bull's eye around the spots they hit". Companies are filled with them. And Howard nails them.
Howard Stevenson lives in a parallel universe of super bright Harvard students who are pretty much all destined to become captains of industry and multimillionaires. So his theses are not tested on a control group of mere mortals. Nonetheless, there are clear lessons for all to be gleaned from passages throughout the book.
I was particularly enamored of the section on corporate culture and how to evaluate it. There are five questions to answer, and the results should determine how you might or might not fit in, thus saving long months or years of stress and recriminations as you try to survive in the swamp. Unfortunately, few of us get to evaluate corporate cultures from the outside; we consider ourselves massively lucky to be offered a job at all. When we interview, it's with a 26 year old HR manager who has no analysis of culture to share, and the next level is a line director on his/her best behavior. No interviewer is going to admit that the owner is a megalomaniac and that the place makes Glengarry Glen Ross look like Pleasantville. Asking these quite intrusive questions about culture is a surefire trip off the short list.
But he redeems himself with his simple analogy of management styles: "A-level managers hire A-level staff and B-level managers hire C-level staff. C-level managers force their teams to be C-level." So extraordinarily true and to the point. Howard is nothing if not perceptive and concise.
-He spends a good deal of time on how companies evaluate their most important assets: "When an organization evaluates and rewards people based primarily on results, not performance, they're reducing predictability and transparency. That isn't a good thing....that's a formula for failure." Would that America's results fetishists could read and understand that sentence alone!
-Similarly the advice on stepping back to gain more experience rings a bit hollow, as everywhere you turn for such experience rejects you for being overqualified.
Ageism is another evil that goes untreated, as Howard and Eric's contacts all accede to the top of the heap and can do anything they want anywhere they want, whether they're 35 or 70. Not so for us mortals.
So as with anything else, you pick the examples can work with. The bottom line, which recurs throughout is this: "We are happiest when we live life forward and unimpeded by regret." If you have the luck to be able to live that way, life will be most satisfying. Take it from Howard, as thousands of students have. He's right.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Howard's Gift: Food for thought... October 3, 2012

By John Williamson TOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

It's right on the back cover of Howard's Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life's Work, exploiting the inflection points in your life. That's what made me take a further look at this interesting book by entrepreneur and author Eric Sinoway.

So what is an inflection point? Author Sinoway points to Intel's founder and former CEO as calling an inflection point as "an event that fundamentally changes the way that we think and act," and that's about as good and simple a definition as this reader can imagine. Early on the author reviews how as a country, a society, we've experienced a series of fiscal and political events that caused out futures to look a bit different than we had imagined. He points out that for college grads, investment banking was viewed as the surefire pathway to becoming a "master of the universe," and in technology of becoming a multimillionaire visionary such as those who lead Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

But getting a handle on innovation means recognizing, pinpointing or even creating inflection points that will drive you toward success in either your personal or business life. Latch onto or create a positive inflection point, and you can use it as a stepping-stone to a better future. Get hung up in a negative inflection point and your business or even your personal life plummet like jumping off of a cliff without a parachute. These inflection points can make a change for the good in your work or your life if they're positive. If you follow or create negative Inflection points, then your organization, be it small or large, can tank and take you with it.

Author Sinoway names examples of those positive innovators who have recognized how to follow or build good inflection points, then switches to his friend, guide and mentor, Howard Stevenson, and uses their relationship as an example of how an inflection point can bring about surprising and life changing results for the better. After a near brush with death from a heart attack, can someone take such an incident as a positive inflection point and use it to his benefit? If so, how can it be done?

This is a first-person narrative by the author, where he uses real people from his own life as examples of those who have navigated the inflection points in their lives and innovated positive changes in their work and in their personal lives. Throughout the book, Sinoway comes back to his friend Howard Stevenson and the hundreds of hours they have spent together; during walks, in Howard's kitchen, by email, over the phone, in restaurants; discussing the ways that inflection points can make a change. Some of these are for the better, and a few are for the worse. In the author's words, "Figuring out how all those facets fit together is a strategy. Or, as Howard would say, it's business planning for your life's work."

There are other people found throughout the book, and the array of them is impressive, as they can range from corporate leaders to everyday folks. It's the examples of real people from so many walks of life that make this book interesting.

Following some of this thought, take a look at Charles Duhigg's recent book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. It's an interesting book, starting out with individual habits, and then moving up to organizational habits. Recognizing some of the traits we see here help us to be able to identify these inflection points that are so crucial to our lives.

Howard's Gift does not offer or claim to have an "A-to-Z prescription," some idealistic panacea on how to be successful in work or in ones personal life. It does offer some ways of identifying both positive and negative inflection points, and if you can recognize them, then you can think of what changes you might want to make. Above all, it's good food for thought.

10/3/2012