The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers: The Guide for Achieving Success and Satisfaction (Crown Business Briefings) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Richard Smith (Author) "Before he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, Lance Armstrong thought he had all that he needed to be a champion cyclist..." (more)
Key Phrases: experiential promotion, precision promotion, permission paradox, United States, Goldman Sachs, Booz Allen (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Aside from some perfunctory tips on job searching, resume writing and interviewing, the authors, both consultants with the head-hunting firm Spencer Stuart, approach careers as problems in psychology and group dynamics. They urge mid-career executives with suppressed feelings of anxiety and helplessness to view a career as a free-form project of self-actualization that should fit with their personalities and inspire passion. More pragmatically, career building is also an exercise in image-management that should convey potential and experience to employers and their head-hunting consultants. This partly involves canny career moves allowing talent to shine. But climbing the ladder also requires consummate office politics-manipulating perceptions, networking with the powerful, strategic quid pro quos, gaining power by "masquerading as the leader"-all accomplished without stepping on toes, stifling subordinates or "sucking up." The authors convey these lessons in a sometimes turgid mixture of opaque managementese ("successful executives... literally achieve positive impact at an accelerating rate"), squishy survey data ("extraordinary executives... leverage both their strengths and their passions more than six times as often as average employees") and case studies in which executives move from industry to industry in a meteoric, triumphal procession of nebulous jobs in consulting, marketing and finance. The blend of motivational therapeutics and softly Machiavellian tactics may help some executives get out of their rut, but the generic, almost contentless corporate work experiences on display seem far from extraordinary.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Certainly, Citrin's latest book (after Lessons from the Top, 1999, and Zoom! 2002, with Tomas J. Neff) is filled with accolades for executive recruiter Spencer Stuart, his employer. Overlook that, for a while; instead, focus on the enormous potential his company has to analyze a vast array of executive talent and uncover patterns of achievement. That is exactly what Citrin, with coauthor Smith, does. Five differentiating principles--the contrast between a merely successful professional and the extraordinary executive--are not only described but also demonstrated in real C-level individuals in U.S. corporations. For the first principle, "understand the value of you," winning bicyclist Lance Armstrong is profiled, as is Yahoo!'s COO Dan Rosensweig. The benevolent leader, an executive focused on the success of others, is best exemplified in Herb Kelleher, former CEO of Southwest Airlines, among other singled-out individuals. Lists go on and on; what's more important is the application of these principles to the organization, which creates extraordinary people. Finally, the recognition and proof that talent matters to business! Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (August 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400047943
• ISBN-13: 978-1400047949
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #273,846 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If You Aren't Strategizing About Your Career, You Must Read!, September 16, 2003

By	Dana Vandenheuvel "Dana VanDen Heuvel" (Green Bay, WI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, by James M. Citrin and Richard A. Smith was an easy read, and a worthwhile one. Given that I am at a juncture in my career where I need to be making some rather important strategic decisions about going back for the MBA, or staying in the full-time workforce. In reality, my further education will likely be a compromise of those two disciplines, but nonetheless, I need to be strategic.

The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers held no breakthrough insights for me, but it did serve to hone my focus on a few key elements of my career management, and shed some light on how I'm currently doing things that I wasn't aware of.

There were five basic 'patterns' that the book detaiuled are as follows:

1. Understand the Value of You. People with extrordinary careers understand how value is created in the organization and manage their careers according to the value chain. There are three phases of your value, the Potential phase, where employers hire your what you will be able to do, the Experiential phase, where employers hire you to put your previous successes to the test, and Harvest phase, where you are reaping the seads of knowledge sewn in the years of past experience.

2. Practice Benevolent Leadership. Behind every great managers are great employees and great mentors. Use your friends wisely!

3. Overcome the Permission Paradox. Bottom line - successful careers are built on those things that were weren't told you couldn't do, not those things you were givent perimission to do. Understand explicit permission versus implicit permission, and use that to your advantage!

4. Use the 20/80 Principle of Performance. Get out of your defined job and create some real value against the 20% that really matters!

5. Find the Right Fit. No passion, move on to the next gig. This is a major part of the battle. Don't be too successful at something you don't like!

So, what am I doing differently now? Not much really. I've always been an 'implicit permission' kind of guy, I'm quite aware of my current value and am always testing it, and I'm very passionate about what I do. Are you?

Don't forget to check out the book's official website http://www.5patterns.com/

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Take Hold of Your Career, February 1, 2004

By	Galen K. Valentine "gallaine" (Fort Worth, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read a short article about "The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers" on the Internet and decided it might be worth reading. Most of the career "guides" I had read up to this time were of the, `choose your ideal career through completing a series of tests to identify your strengths' variety. But what intrigued me about this book was that rather than selecting the "right" career it was more about making the most of the career of you have. Still, Citrin and Smith do acknowledge the importance of being in a career that plays to your, "strengths, passions, and people" by making it one of the "patterns" of extraordinary careers; oddly, though, it is the last of the five rather the first. Perhaps one of my favorite quotes comes from this pattern, "...many people find, partway up the ascent, that their ladders were leaning against the wrong wall." Again, though, this book is more about what to do with the your career once you have found the "right" one. And therein lies perhaps the most important maxim of this book, successful careers are managed, sometimes unconsciously, rather than driven by fate or luck; a corollary is that opportunities are created and actively sought after rather than passively waited for. Even the authors acknowledge that these ideas aren't new. But the patterns represent a distillation of the interviews and surveys of extraordinary executives conducted across Industry boundaries and they, perhaps, are new, or are at least fresh.

The core of the book is chapters 2 - 6, one for each of the patterns: Understanding the Value of You, Practice Benevolent Leadership, Overcome the Permission Paradox, Differentiate Using the 20/80 Principle, and Find the Right Fit. Citrin and Smith go on to extend the patterns to extraordinary organizations in chapter 7. They use specific examples gleaned from their interviews to illustrate each of the patterns. And while these examples are certainly condensed, in order to fit within the scope of a single volume, they generally, if not specifically and in detail, prove the point. What is less clear though, are how technical careers fall into these patterns. All of the chosen examples are CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CTOs, CIOs, presidents, vice-presidents, and perhaps a Director or two. Though they try to generalize these success patterns you are still left with the impression that extraordinary careers are, at least in part, defined by having entered the executive ranks. I am sure that Citrin and Smith would disagree, but I am still struggling with how to apply these patterns to my rather technical career of Software Engineering without becoming a manager.

Overall this has been a valuable book - if for no other reason than that it has caused me to think about my career in concrete terms and how I can actively manage it rather than waiting for it to happen. The book isn't overly long and can be read in a week during your lunch breaks. Thinking about your career and how to apply the patterns is where the hard work begins.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Take Your Career and Make it Extraordinary! Read This Book!, January 13, 2004

By	Ferd Burfle "ferdburfle" (Eastchester, NY) - See all my reviews

The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers: The Guide for Achieving Success and Satisfaction by James M. Citrin and Richard A. Smith. This is a refreshing look at the Self-Help Career book genre. Job seekers, employers, and human resource professionals - in short, anyone that's interested in enriching their career - will benefit from this book.

THE FIVE PATTERNS OF EXTRAORDINARY CAREERS

1. Understand the Value of You. People with extraordinary careers understand how value is created in the workplace, and translate that knowledge into action, building their personal value over each phase of their careers.

2. Practice Benevolent Leadership. People with extraordinary careers do not claw their way to the top, they are carried there.

3. Overcome the Permission Paradox. People with extraordinary careers overcome one of the great Catch-22s of business: You can't get the job without experience and you can't get the experience without the job.

4. Differentiate Using the 20/80 Principle of Performance. People with extraordinary careers do their defined jobs exceptionally well but don't stop there. They storm past pre-determined objectives to create breakthrough ideas and deliver unexpected impact.

5. Find the Right Fit (Strengths, Passions & People). People with extraordinary careers make decisions with the long-term in mind. They willfully migrate toward positions that fit their natural strengths and passions and where they can work with people they like and respect.

The authors have developed a razor-sharp vocabulary that brings welcome dialogue about careers into the new age of business. The executives in this book are all focused on their career, this is one aspect of those with successful careers. The authors have proven that ignoring one's career can greatly supress chances at success.

Is it the best book I ever read? No, but it did help me to focus my attention on skills I was utilizing, just not to my best advantage.