Builders have this odd notion that many of the people they meet are a potential member of their community or team—as a recruit, a customer, a vendor, a volunteer, a friend, you name it. Even ex-employees qualify because they could take one of those roles in their next job. Here’s where we are going with this: Would your behavior in working with others change if you knew in advance that your relationships would be long lasting? How would you build relationships if everyone you worked with, bought from, or served would always be your neighbor—or at least the smart, talented people you want to keep around?

You can’t hide in a global virtual world. You’ll likely run into the same folks regardless of whether you’ve intended for the relationship to be short or lasting, good or bad. It can be life changing to embrace this reality—think about everyone as a potential long-term member of your dream team.

If you want success that lasts, then you’re better off if you think about your relationships as being built to last with people whose roles change—sometimes they work for you, sometimes you work for them, sometimes they leave your organization and become customers or your vendors or your regulators or your competitors. But, if you consider them on your virtual “team,” the only thing that changes is their role. You still have the relationship.

Of course, you can’t win them all. You won’t be able to—or even want to—keep everyone on your team. However, as you watch how high achievers with long careers behave, and how their network of people grows richer and deeper over the years, it’s obvious that most of them cherish their relationships. They keep high performers on their team—wherever those people may go.

If you’ve shifted your view that roles—employee, volunteer, partner, customer, vendor, neighbor—may change over time, but your network or team doesn’t, then you’re thinking long term and you’ll set yourself up for relationships that are built to last. And when you believe that you’re relationships will be lasting, you’ll behave in ways that treasure relationships.

Builders spend what feels like an excessive amount of time talking about the need to recruit and care for talented people to support the dream. Napoleon Hill^[2] famously advised fans to create a mastermind group—a sort of personal board of directors who share common interests and ambitions, whether it was for their local PTA, a church, or for the management of a major corporation.

The Builders we interviewed talked about this as if it was big news, and most wished they had learned this earlier in school or their careers. They went to great lengths to say, over and over again, that they spent the largest percentage of their time tracking down, surrounding themselves with, and developing the people they variously described as “A” players, top talent, leaders, enablers, great managers, Level 5 executives, angels, saints—all credited as the people who supported the dream or actually did the work. We could hardly get Builders to stop uttering superlatives about their people.

The reason this feels like a cliché is because it is. If you’ve ever listened to a CEO speak at the annual meeting or read an annual report, you’ll never escape without a bromide about how employees are the greatest asset.

Indeed, most everybody gives it lip service, but this doesn’t mean it isn’t true. One way you can tell whether you’re witnessing the real deal is to apply the Porras Principle: “Don’t believe in words—only believe in behaviors.” Watch the behavior of long-lasting high achievers and you’ll see the difference. The walk matches the talk. People judge your values and character based on the difference between your words and actions. Everyone is better off when deeds and testimony match. Although political expediency can be tempting, Builders find that when their core values, words, and actions are in alignment, they feel like they’re on track and, not surprisingly, they attract the right people to their team.

Senator John McCain, with quiet transparency, related a painful lesson about being expedient instead of maintaining alignment of his values, words, and behavior.

“You can do things that appear beneficial and may give you temporary advancement or movement along your path, but unless it’s something you really believe in, it’s not going to, in the long run, succeed. Every time in my career that I’ve done something for political expediency, I’ve later regretted it. When I’ve taken on an issue, even if it’s unpopular at the time to take the position that I’ve taken, always at the end of the day, it’s turned out right,” he insisted.

“I’ll give you a small example. When I ran for president of the United States, the confederate flag issue in South Carolina was a big issue. It was flying over the state capitol in South Carolina. Because I thought that it would gain me votes, I said, ‘It’s a state issue. It’s not my issue,’ which was clearly a cowardly approach to the issue—I still lost and, at the same time, displayed cowardice. I went down afterwards and apologized but that didn’t mean anything. At the time that it was important, I took the political route rather than the route that I knew was correct.”

There is a higher road for you to take, McCain advised: Stick with what you know is right. Period. And when you don’t know something, he said, just say so. In fact, when Builders are asked a question for which they have no answer, most will say something almost never heard on prime time television (maybe the FCC has actually banned the words). It is perhaps the most provocative and courageous phrase anyone can say in public. In fact, the Dalai Lama, the global spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who is spending his lifetime trying to build understanding among faiths around the world, has been caught unabashedly using the phrase, in public, in at least five metropolitan cities just this past year. He says, with a smile and without apology: “I don’t know,” when asked a question for which he has no answer.

Nervous laughter will usually creep over the audience; then they sit in stunned silence as he grins on stage like a bald leprechaun in orange robes and sneakers. Seems shockingly simple in a world where so-called experts speculate on national television far beyond their training or expertise—shouting at each other about things they do not know.

Although it may not initially sound reassuring, “I don’t know” is a sort of a code or catch phrase you can use to identify honest people and enduringly high achievers all over the world. It’s kind of the secret handshake of integrity. When asked a question for which you do not have an answer, spend a moment looking earnest, then as folks lean forward breathlessly to await your wisdom, say “I don’t know.” It works wonders and creates a space in which learning is possible.

Many Builders as individuals have world-class minds, but actually know little or nothing about most things. You can be excused for nodding off at points during the last 200 pages, but if you take anything away from this diatribe, it should be this: The thing that matters is meaning! It drives everything. Builders align their attention to the things that matter to them, and they know a lot about that stuff. They are experts on what matters to them—their portfolio of passions. They talk responsibly in the domains of their expertise; otherwise, they say “I don’t know.”

The Dalai Lama cares about many things, but he doesn’t have all the answers. Like other great spiritual leaders, he knows some very important things with exquisite detail and depth. That is because Builders are disciplined junkies about context. They are fanatical about framing what they say in terms of their goals and values. Most questions they are asked end with a segue back to the goal or mission with which they are passionately engaged. It’s like a broken record. Only seconds after saying, “I don’t know,” they tell you what they do know about their passion or goal. When folks mess up, they talk about how that behavior didn’t support the goal. When members of their team excel, Builders talk about how that work supported the goal or values. They work hard to avoid getting off the point.

The idea here is that human beings are fundamentally linguistic beings and act through language. Builders use language to create a shared sense of reality and to manage meaning for their partners and team members. Action is managed through language.

Intuitively, they are always pushing and shoving the three circles into alignment. Everything that has meaning gets organized in a ThoughtStyle, which then is turned into words and deeds—and ActionStyles—that support what matters to them. They use every opportunity to reaffirm goals and meaning.

“I watch my language because words hit people hard,” Joe Nichols, Jr., cautioned. “When I catch myself saying the wrong thing or more often, when (his wife) Bonnie does, we try to get back on track. What you say really matters. Your words have to match where you’re heading,” he said. Joe is always watching whether his words and actions match his intentions, and are aligned with what he is trying to do. He might not feel strong or courageous today—in fact, “I often don’t. But if I do those three things—if my words, action, and intentions match—without fail, it all works out.”

Highly accomplished people use language in an instinctive or intuitive way—and it’s focused on what they’re trying to accomplish. Human beings use words to “get things done” or “mess things up,” Joe said, so he pays close attention to how he treats people with his words and how he is treating himself with the chatter inside his head. If you’re wondering what we mean by that, we’re talking about the voice you just heard in your brain that asked that question. As you’ve noticed all your life, that voice in your head can be as toxic as it is supportive in helping you reach your goals.

But don’t let it hijack or subtly and insidiously undermine your long-term objectives.

What you focus on in your words and actions impact your effectiveness and, as studies now confirm, your health. “Surprisingly, stress disability claims often increase after people take stress management workshops. Those classes can teach people to see more stress in their lives,” said author Al Siebert.^[3]

Your words and actions can make you feel better too, helping you manage your attitude and keep on track, not the other way around. Enduringly successful people the world over tell us it’s no accident that, when you commit to progress with a strong narrative and matching deeds, you chip away and eventually overwhelm toxic thoughts and feelings.

“Sometimes, it feels as though you have to take back your feelings by force, like they’ve been kidnapped by a terrorist in your head,” said leadership author, Terry Pearce. “But you can avoid the fight by neutralizing the enemy with words and actions that support your purpose—to rise above the fray.”

When Builders pay close attention to what they say and do—and make sure both those things are focused on their long-term aspirations rather than the emotion of the moment, then they discover, miraculously, they’ve developed a better attitude! This in turn shapes their “ecosystem” for success.

“Play out your dream. There is no second chance. You either choose to impact your environment or your environment will define you,” said Bill Strickland, CEO of Bidwell Training Center and the Manchester Craftsman’s Guild. Strickland, who once chaired the Expansion Arts Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, has used his lifelong passion for the arts to turn around the lives of thousands of people living in poverty.

“People who are poor can’t ever imagine themselves in circumstances other than misery. If you build world-class architecture, and you open it up and you have lots of light and lots of ambiance, what happens is people feel more optimistic about life itself. By virtue of the fact that they are physically in this space, their temperament changes, their demeanor changes, their sense of themselves changes. And I believe that’s the first step that’s essential to the transformation of people who are fundamentally disadvantaged and who feel effectively left behind in life.”

The physical environment is one important part of the whole “ecosystem” that supports the mission that you’re committed to. On the basis that anything worth doing can’t be done alone, your ecosystem includes your personal team, your organization, and where you spend your time. There are five major elements you can organize the environment around—there’s the structure, culture, systems, technology, and physical setting. Success or failure in the long term will rely on how well aligned those things are with the incentives you’ve put in place and the behaviors you need for success—everything in that “ecosystem” can inspire or demotivate you and the team. It’s not just one thing; it’s everything working together.

No matter how skillfully you recruit the right people to your dream or organizational environment, you can’t do a lot about what’s inside another person’s skin. We’re talking here about an individual’s own personal history and experiences: all his or her successes, and all his or her disappointments and demons. Some details of his or her life probably represent more information than you want to know anyway, but other parts are necessary to understand even if you can’t change him or her. As former quarterback and pro football hall-of-famer Steve Young quipped, “Some people love to get yelled at. Others would be devastated if you yelled at them. And, you better know the difference.”

We’re all different inside; we all have different aspirations, motives, goals, perceptions, cultural influences, and so on. What you can have direct impact on is what’s outside a person’s skin. If you are the organizational leader, or even if this is just your department, then it’s your job to think about the whole environment in which your team is attempting to work and succeed. When the environment—what’s outside their skin—delivers confusing signals about what they ought to do, you get behavior that is all over the map.

Let’s make this personal for a moment and place you in an organization in which the boss is asking for one thing, and you get paid by the organization to do something else, and your fellow teammates have yet another idea of what to do—which signal are you going to respond to? Well, a lot of that is rooted in who you are and what your history is.

If you have a very dominant father, for example, you might respond much more (or much less) to what the boss said. If you were a real social animal, you might respond more to what your coworkers said. If you were really ambitious and started selling newspapers when you were seven, you might respond more to what the reward system says. What you respond to is going to be different based on what’s inside your skin. If the signals in the organization are aligned, then there is some predictability about how you will respond.

The basic model for success that lasts is built on knowing what behaviors you want from yourself, from your team, and in your organization, and aligning all the signals and incentives you’re sending throughout the system, including to yourself. This is an easy thing to say, but it is very difficult for any individual or organization to do. Most people and organizations never achieve a high degree of alignment. We’ve all been in a place where we’ve tried to get things done despite the environment. It is possible for a while, but it’s really hard work and rarely sustainable.

Among the three of us, we (your authors) have worked with literally tens of thousands of people in our professional careers as executives, consultants, teachers, and coaches. We have witnessed individuals grow miraculously. According to the dictionary, a miracle is an event in reality beyond and out of the ordinary. Based on this definition, all the people we interviewed for this project have lead miraculous lives.

You can debate “is it genes or is it the environment,” but why would you? You can’t do anything about the former, and you can do a great deal about the latter. Science has even determined you can even do something about the nongenetic stuff that’s inside your skin. You can have an extreme makeover and it does start inside your head, AND it requires what we’ll call extreme environmental hygiene. What does that mean? Alignment. That requires that you get out of your life all the stuff that is inconsistent with your passions and goals. That includes people. Sounds harsh—can’t help that—it is the way it is. You bring into your life everything that either supports or undermines who you are and what you want to create. Choose wisely. Of course, this is a process—not a light switch. It’s tough and it can take awhile.

What’s amazing to us is how enduringly successful people use infinitely different versions of this approach to build alignment—whether they’re at home or in a Fortune 500 company that has hired the world’s most expensive consultants or is using sophisticated software. Here’s a simple, powerful practice that many Builders use.

Pick a behavior you don’t like going on that you’d like to get rid of, but it just keeps showing up. Look at everything in the environment that rewards that behavior and all of the things that block that behavior. You’ll find that the first list is a lot longer than the second list.

Then, pick a behavior that you’d like, something that’s really important for success that isn’t happening enough, and do the same analysis. You’ll find that the list of things blocking those desired behaviors is a lot longer than the list driving progress.

It’s about the payoffs, as Dr. Phil would say, that reinforce or sabotage behaviors and therefore make it easy or hard to achieve your goals and purpose. The trick is to get the messaging and incentives better aligned with the behaviors you really want. This is as true in your personal life as it is at work.

“Show me how a man plays golf and I’ll tell you how he lives his life,” says Fred Shoemaker, one of the greatest golf coaches practicing today. People tell him that they play golf for peace of mind—they like being relaxed, and the chance to be in nature with friends, to be themselves, and to let go. But when Shoemaker asks them what they want to get out of their golf workshop, “They say things like ‘stop my slice,’ ‘fix my short game,’ ‘improve my score,’ ‘achieve more power,’ and all the things that golfers want.” Their first answer had to do with enjoyment, the second focused on what was wrong with their game. In golf, as in life, there is a problem when goals are not aligned with meaning. In golf, life, and business, too many people wait for satisfaction to come at some distant point in the future, when everything finally works. Ironically, “Without the joy, we can rarely have the stamina and passion to achieve things that we’re after!” Shoemaker said. Your goals should give you some satisfaction from the moment that you set them in motion—that’s one of the tests that let you know they are meaningful to you.

We acknowledge that it takes tremendous commitment, discipline, and sometimes great courage to continuously engage in the practice of alignment.

The only thing that provides lasting success (and happiness, if that’s part of your personal definition of success) is the day-by-day practice and struggle to move the three circles—Meaning, Thought, and Action—toward alignment in your life and work. It is an adventure that you are better off embracing with all of your heart and soul because it is a challenge that never ends as long as you are here.

So far, this has been quite a journey for us. We say “so far” because we have learned from Builders that lasting success requires lasting engagement, and there is so much yet to learn. Legendary television writer and producer Norman Lear said that one of his touchstones of success is to have served as a lightning rod for socially important dialogs. We hope this book serves as a lightning rod for a continuing dialog about success that serves us all. In the meantime, if there is such a thing as the secret we have found, this would be it: If you want Success Built to Last, then Create a Life That Matters (to you).