Howard's Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life's Work
Written by Eric Sinoway and Merrill Meadow
Narrated by William Dufris
4/5
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About this audiobook
"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 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.
Listening to Howard's Gift is like having a wise, caring friend sit down and say, "Let's figure all this out together."
"This book is truly a gift for all those seeking fulfilling careers." - Wendy Kopp, Founder & CEO, Teach For America
Eric Sinoway
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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Reviews for Howard's Gift
6 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wow! What a gem. The ST in Baupost is the real deal
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 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.