The Essence of Success {Review}

The Essence of Success offers insights on Leadership and Strategy from Sport, Business, War and Politics, seeking to answer a simple question: How have people managed extraordinary things to escape the shackles of their circumstances? 

Siim Kallas summed up this book in the final pages when he said “This book is about humanity’s quest to realise its potential and how individuals can make a difference through their choices”. 

In the preface the authors wrote that their ambition wasn’t to deliver another self-help book or try to teach the reader how to be ‘successful’. Rather, through detailed studies of individuals and events, they set out to identify qualities, characteristics and patterns of success and failure.

Based on their strategy, I would deem this book a success. It was certainly not a self-help book or a manual on how to obtain success. As promised, it did explore detailed case studies and extract qualities, characteristics and patterns of success and failure. So why didn’t I enjoy it? (Spoiler-alert. I didn’t).

This book reads more as a history book in short story format. In parts, the storytelling was compelling, but in others it was dry. My interest peaked in areas I had a connection with (some sports, the middle east) but quickly dropped off in areas I didn’t. It immediately pulled my mind to investigative journalism books I have read, where the topic is so far off from my interests or familiarity, yet I was hooked throughout. This book failed to do that for me. You have to be a person who is interested in history in general because the writing and snippets of inspiration won’t be enough to hold your attention.

Even though it wasn’t my cup of tea and I placed it in the would not recommend category, this book is exceptionally well researched, put together thoughtfully. It draws out important and inspirational lessons which would serve any politician, aspiring sports star and business leader well.

In the spirit of not making the non-history lovers sit through the whole book to slowly scoop out the flecks of gold, here are some of my favourite insights.

The more you push yourself, the stronger you become both the body and mind.

Big gains are small gains made over a long time.

To achieve change, it is necessary to assess things as they are, and not as you would like them to be.

To accomplish anything in life you have to have a burning passion, it has to come from inside, it cannot be taught. It’s the thing that drives you forward.

It is not what you say, it is what you do.

If you see people as a threat, you have the wrong mindset. You need to work constantly to make yourself redundant.

Victory requires setting out a clear end goal against which you can be measured.

People overestimate ideas and underestimate execution.

You’re interested in what drives success and appreciate a case study historical approach.

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