By Walter Isaacson

Many people starting a new career focus on one thing: how to get ahead. Later in their careers, they learn the importance of other goals, such as making a contribution, upholding values, and pursuing a passion that they find meaningful.

Throughout his distinguished career as a major business executive, professor, and corporate board leader, Bill White has developed a crucial leadership insight that is valuable for aspiring young people as they start their careers—and also for the business community and world at large. Bill knows that goals and values are an integral component of being truly successful.

To the extent that you focus on making a contribution rather than getting ahead, you will rise naturally in a company. Your success will be seen as based on merit and worth. Your company and colleagues will all benefit from your rise, and they will be eager to help someone they perceive as helpful to others.

In the previous generation, some saw ruthlessness and greed as being methods for getting ahead. We all saw where that led and what it did to corporate America.

In today’s business world a premium is placed on values—and rightly so. Corporations treasure integrity and credibility, and will promote the people they trust and who can guard their corporate values.

Your personal ethics are reflected, and shaped, by the dozens of little decisions you make each day. What this book shows is why it is so important these days to get this aspect of your career right.

The natural temptation for ambitious young workers is to look at a situation and say, “What can I get out of it?” True success, however, comes from knowing how to lead by serving. When you serve the larger goals of your organization, the people around you, and the greater good of your society, you are more likely to get ahead and build a fulfilling, rewarding career.

Benjamin Franklin, the patron saint of self-improvement books, coined the maxim “doing well by doing good” in his Poor Richard’s Almanac. Now, in this wonderfully readable book, Bill White shows, step-by-step, how you can indeed truly do well in your career by doing good in this world.