Success From Anywhere

Create Your Own Future of Work from the Inside Out

Karen Mangia

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119834649
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

What would happen to your team, and your organization, if everyone knew how to change the game – and make success a daily occurrence?

Companies and individuals are looking for more freedom: personal freedom, creative freedom, and freedom to rethink what work really means. From dealing with COVID-19, facing diversity issues, battling burnout, zoom fatigue and more, organizations are stretched thin and must find a way to help their employees find balance and freedom in order to thrive in these unprecedented times. In Success From Anywhere: Create Your Own Future of Work from the Inside Out, bestselling author and veteran Salesforce executive Karen Mangia delivers an eyes-wide-open discussion on the future of work and what it means to find personal and professional success in the new workforce.

Whether you're in a hybrid environment, or working from home, you know the importance of connection and teamwork. This compelling, practical guide explains how success is something organizations discover from the inside out – creating greater engagement, retention, and professional impact from a new understanding of the future of work. With commentary from business leaders like Tom Peters, as well as guidance from leading scientists like David Eagleman and Kelly McGonigal, Success From Anywhere shows professionals how to build success into every organizational design – regardless of company culture, leadership, or industry – and offers actionable insights on a range of timely and relevant subjects, including:

• Rethinking the foundations of what work really means, including work-life balance, the future of work, and where peak performance really comes from
• The origins of intolerance, and how to access greater diversity, inclusion, and belonging inside every organization
• Creating a high-impact culture in the anxious and stressful pandemic environment by redesigning the game – and creating your own rules
• How to overcome feelings of constriction and confinement, to find new possibilities, for your own career
• Getting past the feeling that you have to "do it all" in order to succeed
• Powerful scientific insights into stress-relief, battling burnout and becoming your best self

Perfect for anyone wanting to create greater professional impact, whether working from home, leading a hybrid team, or just trying to access greater personal freedom, this principles-based guidebook will earn a spot in the libraries of executives, managers, leaders, and employees who care about creating innovative and inclusive organizations. Discover how to adapt to these changing times and the uncertain times ahead with a new playbook for yourself, your career, and your organization – that playbook is Success From Anywhere.

“This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”

—Alan Watts, British philosopher

“My work is a game. A very serious game.”

—M.C. Escher, artist

I love to win.

In a time before smartphones, before Super Mario Bros.™ started their family business, before Nintendo^® made their Switch™, my brother and I were notorious gamers. We played old-school games that lasted for days. Board games. Card games. Puzzle games. Sometimes we even set up camp next to our games, with no screens or distractions to interrupt us. My brother would hunker down in his Hot Wheels sleeping bag. Mine was bright blue with a rainbow interior. I always kept a red plastic flashlight inside of my personal campsite – not because I was afraid of the dark, but because I wanted to keep a night watch over the game. And to make sure my brother was playing by the rules 24/7.

The day was built around the game. We curtailed the duration of breakfast and lunch to return to the game. Then we figured out how to sneak snacks upstairs so we could eat while we played the game. We skipped playing with friends to play the game. And we staged a united front with our parents to play the game: we didn't always like each other, but we were feverishly united in resisting anything that might pull us away from the game. Doctor visits. Dinner. Family time. Baths. Bedtime stories. We understood commitment. The game mattered most.

Sound familiar?

Sometimes seemingly arbitrary obligations – like school and homework – required us to play shorter-duration games. Since my brother is four years younger than me, I would defer to him to choose the game on “quick game days.” He predictably returned with the same box.

A board game called Life.

In the Game of Life^®, players travel through their lives looking for success. Throughout the process, you earn money, make investments, get married, have children, and retire.

As you spin the wheel and advance your Game of Life^®, you encounter a series of crossroads. Take the short route and go directly to business and to a salary? Or take a detour to university and the long road to business and a career?

The strategy to win at the Game of Life^® – by design – is to accumulate:

• Cars
• Cash
• Connections
• Collateral

No matter how you play the game, all of the players eventually reach the block on the board labeled in bright red: DAY OF RECKONING.

According to the rules on the box top, you must STOP in the DAY OF RECKONING SPACE.

Hey, guess where we all are right now?

The game of life no longer feels like child's play.

I've lived through the unintended implications of playing to win the game of life at all costs – and I'm not just talking about the flashlight next to my sleeping bag. I wrote about the high price I paid in my first book, Success With Less (http://bit.ly/successwithless). And then I took a look at how the game changed, in my second book, Working from Home (http://bit.ly/wfh-karenmangia).

The pandemic brought us all to a simultaneous stop: a full stop in a space called the Day of Reckoning. And what our collective Day of Reckoning revealed is a tally of who's winning and who's losing in life. In real terms. With real people. Real people we know. Real people we care about. Real people who we want to win. I'm talking about our families. Our friends. Our local business owners. Our frontline workers. Ourselves.

You're here because you like to win. Are you ready to play a new game – so that you can find the success that will determine your future?

You and I now have to make a big decision. Let's decide, right now, how we move forward from the Day of Reckoning. Let's discover how to get unstuck from the patterns of the past.

After all, if you're going to win at the game of life, you have to see new pathways and perspectives. Otherwise, you're just going to keep retracing the same steps.

This book is designed, specifically, so that you can see beyond your limits. From a place of personal awareness and redesign, a new kind of contribution emerges. Does your organization need a better hybrid work model, improved diversity, or greater presence in Europe? These kinds of organizational design decisions come from the people within the organization. Therefore, Success from Anywhere really starts with you.

In these pages, you will find an opportunity to begin again. A blueprint for creating the future – one person, and one organization, at a time.

In a post-pandemic era, each of us has a choice: a choice to design a new kind of game, regardless of how anyone else decides to design, play, or win their game. But wait a minute. Does that kind of flexibility sound too good to be true?

I still work in a huge corporation. I still have a boss. I still have deadlines. I still have meetings. But I designed a new game for myself with new rules and outcomes and measures of success.

No one else had to change their game design for me to change mine. Playing a game I can win means redefining what it means to win. And what I'm willing to do to win. Even if everyone else wants to play the same old game. Or play by someone else's rules.

My premise for you is a simple one:

I thought it was impossible. Until I met Fitch.

“I've got a dilemma,” I told him as I adjusted my mask. “I keep thinking there must be a way for everyone to live and work better. These COVID days aren't going to last forever. Lots of people are burnt out. There's a lot of people who aren't being treated fairly. There's frustration for everybody,” I said, looking at my shoes for inspiration. “I just don't know how. I feel stuck.”

Fitch nodded his bushy head of hair. His bright blue eyes looked back at me, over his mask, with an unfiltered kindness and empathy. You know the friend who feels like family? That's Fitch. He's always on the lookout – keeping his eyes open for the next thing. That game-changing idea. That plan that we can all understand.

A slight breeze on the back patio brought the reminders of early fall in central Indiana. Rays of warm sunshine danced on our faces, as we sat in the big patio chairs on the new deck. Sunset would come soon. Sitting in the newly finished outdoor kitchen, we were pondering a way to make things better. Simple, right?

Fitch leaned forward. “I'm trying to do something with my new company,” he explained. “Look at the swings in our backyard,” he said, pointing to a large wooden playset that included monkey bars and a small fort up top. “I think all kids should be able to play on a playground.”

Fitch continued. “I wondered, ‘How could I create a playground for every kid?’” That idea turned into a subscription candy service, where Fitch donates 10% of earnings to help pay for new swing sets on playgrounds.

Fitch laughed. What was so funny?

“I know the best way to get unstuck,” he exclaimed as he rushed into the house, calling out to me over his shoulder. “Let's play a game!”

The Game of Life^®?

He burst through the patio doors and laid something down on the patio table. What was he planning? I looked down and saw it: a silver pen on top of a simple white notepad, no bigger than a deck of playing cards.

Before I could ask questions, Fitch got down to business. He wielded the pen and paper like a master artist with a brush and canvas. A moment later, he revealed his masterpiece.

“Wow,” I said, “What game is this?” I wasn't sure what the masterpiece was, exactly. Was Fitch going through his very own Blue Period, becoming a patio Picasso? Had he just invented his own alphabet, or was that a duck chasing a snowman? I was mystified – and intrigued.

“This is our game,” he stepped back and pointed at the pad, using the pen like a laser pointer. “The game we are going to play together.” He grinned, certain that he had solved the puzzle that I had yet to understa...