How to succeed in your career: Basic Black, a book review
by Sylvia on 02/05/09 at 11:37 am
Today I finished reading a book called Basic Black from Cathie Black. I found it an inspiring book for women who want to achieve and get ahead in their careers.
Cathie Black
Cathie Black is the president of Hearst Corporation, publisher of such magazines as O (Ophra Whinfrey magazine), Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazar. She enjoys a huge salary and a very prestigious career. She has also been named as 1 one the 50 most powerful women by Forbes. In addition to that she has managed to have a long term relationship with her husband and has raised 2 children.
I liked the way this book was written. It starts of with a chapter that summarizes her whole career with funny and meaningful anecdotes. This sets up the book perfectly as throughout her book Cathie will refer back to certain times in her career and because we get the whole overview right from the start we always undertstand where the comments fit in.
The book is structured on topics rather than any chronological story of her life (or career for that matter).At the start of the book we do learn however that Cathie started her career in advertising sales. First as an assistant, later advertising manager, then publisher and on to the position she currently holds at Hearst. This book is basically about what it takes to get a career like hers. It is is the book, as she says, she would have wanted to read when she was just starting her career.
Keys to succes
Her first chapter is on drive. In Cathie’s opinion this is one of the key factors of success. This is followed by a chapter on taking calculated risks.
“The worst case scenario is rarely as bad as you think”.
She then speaks about the importance of making a good first impression. Points raised are the way you dress, carry and express yourself and if you are looking people in the eye.
Managing people
Chapter 3 is a about managing people. You get a sense in this book that Cathie had to learn a thing or two about this topic. In one of her first managerial jobs she actually got into a situatation where her staff was so infuriated with her, that they threatened to walk out of their jobs en masse. It testifies of her strength of character that she was able to solve that situation. Cathie herself admits that she is still learning to this day how to best manage people but she shares of lots of insight in the dos and don’ts of management.
Managing fear
Another chapter is on fear. Fear of believing you may not be able to do something, fear of criticism. I particularly like two questions that Cathie asks herself when someone criticizes her: “Could I trust that this person is acting in good faith and not some some ulterior motive just to bring me down” and “Did he have some knowledge of this particular situation that I didn’t”. When you say yes to both questions, it pays to listen to the criticism and learn from it, otherwise discard it.
She then goes on to give some advice on how to land your dream job. This is quite basic stuff: how to write your cover letter, resume, how to prepare for your interview, doing the interview and how to follow up.
After a chapter on power she also does not avoid talking about one of her few failures: the collapse of talk magazine. One of the key lessons of that is that it is essential to establish key bench marks for success ahead of time and keep a decent amount of control if you invest a lot of money in a project.
Finding your passion and leading the 160 C lifestyle
She also stresses the point of finding your passion something I addressed in an earlier article: how to discover a job you love and writes on how to achieve the right work / life balance, something she calls the 160 C lifestyle. One of the most important advise here is:
“Have your all not anyone else’s”
This means that you will need to determine the right balance for you. Don’t listen to others or do what others think you should do, but really try to find out what’s right for you.
Topics like attitude and leadership are then discussed in later chapters.
Conclusion
All in all this book was very easy and entertaining to read. There are lots of stories of ineresting conflicts or situations. Lots of them involving people you know like Oprah Winfrey and Rupert Murdoch. If you want to have a good book on how to get ahead in your career both as an employee or an entrepreneur then I can fully recommend Basic Black by Cathie Black.
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