Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

She worried constantly about the morale and development of her people, so that even with the cuts, she refused to sacrifice the unique and wonderful parts of the Xerox culture. Xerox was known throughout the industry as the company that gave retirement parties and hosted retiree reunions. As the employees struggled side by side with her, she refused to abolish their raises and, in a morale-boosting gesture, gave them all their birthdays off. She wanted to save the company in body and spirit. And not for herself or her ego, but for all her people who were stretching themselves to the limit for the company.

After slaving away for two years, Mulcahy opened Time magazine only to see a picture of herself grouped with the notorious heads of Tyco and WorldCom, men responsible for two of the biggest corporate management disasters of our time.

But a year later she knew her hard work was finally paying off when one of her board members, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, told her, “I never thought I would be proud to have my name associated with this company again. I was wrong.”

Mulcahy was winning the sprint. Next came the marathon. Could Xerox win that, too? Maybe it had rested on its laurels too long, resisting change and letting too many chances go by. Or maybe the growth mindset—Mulcahy’s mission to transform herself and her company—would help save another American institution.

Jack, Lou, and Anne—all believing in growth, all brimming with passion. And all believing that leadership is about growth and passion, not about brilliance. The fixed-mindset leaders were, in the end, full of bitterness, but the growth-minded leaders were full of gratitude. They looked up with gratitude to their workers who had made their amazing journey possible. They called them the real heroes.

Are

CEO and Male Synonymous?

When you look at the books written by and about CEOs, you would think so. Jim Collins’s good-to-great leaders (and his comparison not-so-great leaders) were all men. Perhaps that’s because men are the ones who’ve been at the top for a long while.

A few years ago, you’d have been hard-pressed to think of women at the top of big companies. In fact, many women who’ve run big companies had to create them, like Mary Kay Ash (the cosmetics tycoon), Martha Stewart, or Oprah Winfrey. Or inherit them, like Katharine Graham, the former head of The Washington Post.

Things are beginning to change. Won now hold more key positions in big business. They’ve been the CEOs of not only Xerox, but also eBay, Hewlett-Packard, Viacom’s MTV Networks, Time Warner’s Time, Inc., Lucent Technologies, and Rite Aid. Women have been the presidents or chief financial officers of Citigroup, PepsiCo, and Verizon. In fact, Fortune magazine called Meg Whitman of eBay “maybe … the best CEO in America” of the “world’s hottest company.”

I wonder whether, in a few years, I’ll be able to write this whole chapter with women as the main characters. On the other hand, I hope not. I hope that in a few years, it will be hard to find fixed-mindset leaders—men or women—at the top of our most important companies.

A STUDY OF GROUP PROCESSES

Researcher Robert Wood and his colleagues did another great study. This time they created management groups, thirty groups with three people each. Half of the groups had three people with a fixed mindset and half had three people with a growth mindset.

Those with the fixed mindset believed that: “People have a certain fixed amount of management ability and they cannot do much to change it.” In contrast, those with the growth mindset believed: “People can always substantially change their basic skills for managing other people.” So one group thought that you have it or you don’t; the other thought your skills could grow with experience.

Every group had worked together for some weeks when they were given, jointly, the task I talked about before: a complex management task in which they ran a simulated organization, a furniture company. If you remember, on this task people had to figure out how to match workers with jobs and how to motivate them for maximum productivity. But this time, instead of working individually, people could discuss their choices and the feedback they got, and work together to improve their decisions.

The fixed- and growth-mindset groups started with the same ability, but as time went on the growth-mindset groups clearly outperformed the fixed-mindset ones. And this difference became ever larger the longer the groups worked. Once again, those with the growth mindset profited from their mistakes and feedback far more than the fixed-mindset people. But what was even more interesting was how the groups functioned.