How do we define success?
Tisch on success
Transcript
I used to think of success in the business context. That those who got to the top of the corporate pyramid were the most successful. Some of the most unhappy people I know are people at the top of the corporate pyramid. My wife came out of the news business. She was in network news. And one of the things that she said, having been a very successful correspondent for a major network, she said, "This is really a business of very few happy endings." And she said, "Very few people have the opportunity to walk out of the business, having done what they need to do, and move on."
And I found that in business, people don't always step back when they have the opportunity to step back. That they need to go on. They need more adulation, they need more perks, they need more compensation. And they start to neglect the things in life that are really the things that make them successful. They start to neglect their spouse, or their children, or their community. All in the name of wanting to spend more time in the business. And I don't think there's ever been a tombstone that said, "He spent a lot of time at the office." . . .
If one of my kids came to me, and said that they wanted to be successful like me, I'd want to understand what their definition of success is. What do they see me as? If they see me as a person who was a good parent, or a good aunt, that's success. If they see me as a person who is one-dimensional, and did a lot of deals, and was in the newspaper a lot, that's not success to me. It's the totality of what you are that determines whether you're successful or not. And a lot of it has to do with your own definition of success. And a lot of success has to do with self-satisfaction.