What do the founders of Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook teach us? 
Many aspire to the success of iconic founders, Bill Gates (Microsoft), the two Steves: Jobs and Wozniak (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon). They have achieved the goals that many pursue in their careers.
CHASING THE SUCCESS FORMULA
Many mistakenly assume that they accumulated their wealth, acclaim, and world-changing breakthroughs by pursuing these rewards directly. Many therefore try to emulate what their career paths ‘seem’ to have been in order to acquire comparable extrinsic rewards. They try to follow the discipline and linear formulas prescribed by so many of today’s success gurus. They are at a loss when their incredible hard work does not pay off as it did for our seven super-achievers.
THE INTRINSICALLY-DRIVEN CAREER
That is because the elusive success formula these seven share is not what would-be imitators thought. Rather, it was the serial pursuit of intrinsic rather than extrinsic rewards along a path defined by biological predisposition and preference. An exercise in my ‘Sourcing Your Savant’ article will help you to identify your personal formula.
A NONLINEAR CAREER PATH
In the interim, let’s translate the formula into generic terms that anyone might emulate: Our seven icons applied their strongest most rewarding, most addictive talents to their most meaningful, impactful application for audiences which would value their output the most. They repetitively broke through frontier after frontier of capability, accomplishment, and impact with those talents and this formula.
Their strongest talents are a constant. Therefore, their advance will be a nonlinear expansion in capability and impact around that core. Think widening concentric circles. In other words, they continuously improved on the thing they do best rather than advancing up a linear ladder to more responsibility, for example. Rather than ladder-climbing, our seven founders were simply thrust to the top by the expansion of their greatest strengths into widening circles of impact. Their success was nonlinear.
THE BIOLOGY FACTOR
Yet what I am promoting is not about clichés such as “follow your heart” or “do what you love” or “play to your strengths”. When you get your personal formula correct as our super seven did, there are biological consequences. Biological benefits explode exponentially. We have been identifying a goal state of operating at one’s biological maximum around the use, improvement, and strengthening of one’s strongest talents. A plethora of biological mechanisms have evolved to pressure us to operate at this biological maximum to ensure the survival of our species. So when these biological mechanisms kick in, magic happens. An overdrive engages.
Addictive drives and emotions activate to pull you to use your strongest talents. They make what would be work for anyone else into irresistible, compelling, addictive play for you. Discipline and force become unnecessary to achieve long hours of productivity and peak performance. This was the day-to-day life of our seven super-achievers. No wonder they accomplished so much.
Further, one will be merging with nature’s creative process. Even non-creatives may suddenly wax creative. The kinds of breakthroughs and flashes of genius experienced by our super-seven increased significantly. One breakthrough may be life-changing, career-making, and even world-changing. Imagine the lifetime of leaps these seven founders experienced. Even coincidences increase to catapult you ahead because they are part of the same information-leap process. Routine career strategies could never compete with this kind of capability.
In addition, you will spend most of your day in a peak-performance, peak-growth state called flow. Flow is our maximum state. Therefore, mechanisms have evolved to addict us to it. Every time you enter flow when it is focused on the use or improvement of your top talents, your functionality, skill, and knowledge of your craft will increase. The baseline operation of our iconic founders thus increased over their lifetimes.
There is more in this overdrive state. Flow is actually an altered state of consciousness. It will cause your consciousness to expand. You may better see the interconnectedness of things as a result. Your work will improve with this perspective. But more importantly, your cognitive capabilities will increase: conceptual, abstract, system, and big-picture thinking, for example. Right-brain activity will also increase significantly. Synergy with the left brain that most cultures develop better will be maximized. The result will be whole-brain operation at levels which exceed the sum of the parts. This further increases what you can achieve. Prepare to transcend!
THE BIOLOGICALLY MAXIMIZED CAREER
Imagine what would happen after decades of upgrading, performing, and achieving at your biological maximum as our seven founders did. What will your biologically maximized career achieve? What will ‘your’ Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google or Facebook equivalent look like?
The Ultimate Career Strategy – What do the founders of Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook teach us? Reprinted in Personal Excellence October 2014, part of Excellence Essentials from HR.com
