Do you love reading about successful people and finding out how they achieved their success? If so, then Winners: And How They Succeed by Alastair Campbell might be a book for you. Keep on reading to see my review of the book.

In Winners: And How They Succeed, Alastair Campbells set out to get to the heart of success by analysing the best athletes, political leaders and global business empires. However, right at the beginning, Alastair states that “there is no such thing as a single ‘recipe for success’ and nobody is likely to win anything simply by following the formula of another winner”. This seems to be contradicting the purpose of the book, but hey ho.

The first part of the book is about The Holy Trinity. According to Alastair, The Holy Trinity is Objectives, Strategy and Tactics. The idea of having an objective, strategy and tactic is then applied to the people Alastair later analyses, even if at times it is contradictory.

Another major focus of Part 1 of the book is around leadership and teamship. In sport, politics and business, great leadership is vital. There are lots of people who dream of being a leader, but I loved the fact, Alastair mentioned the downside of leadership – “Big decisions are likely to be controversial. All leaders go through periods of being popular and unpopular.” Whilst being a leader is glamourised the fact is that leaders have to make unpopular decisions and it can be very lonely at the top.

Part 2 is called It’s All In The Mind and explores mindset. Alastair writes

“You can have the greatest strategy going, with a perfectly capable leader and team, but without the right mindset these are nothing”. This part of the book explores what mindset is needed to win, the power of visualisation and then discusses the mindset of boxer Floyd Mayweather (a boxer who never lost a match in his professional career).

When it comes to mindset, Mental skills coach Andy McCann suggests that “Those what get to the top have one of two mindsets. A go to mindset, which is why your central motivation is the desire to win. And a move from mindset where your big driver is fear of failure.” I loved this concept because I could see in real life how some people are motivated by winnings whilst others just hate to lose. There was then a discussion about Olympic swimmers and how one mindset produced more members of the team, thus suggesting the two mindsets don’t produce equal results.

Part 3 of Winners: And How They Succeed is title Standing Out From The Crowd and it was no surprise to see Richard Branson mentioned in this section. When it comes to bold business owners, Richard Branson is often mentioned due to his stunts. However, Alastair pushed this further, bringing up the question of what is boldness versus what is recklessness? And I loved his answer “it all depends on whether the gamble comes off or not.”

Whilst it definitely is advisable to not push boldness too far that you are reckless you always have to be aware that “doing nothing can be equally risky” and when it comes to winning you have to be prepared to take risks.

In this part of the book, I also loved the discussion about innovation and invention. Alastair outlines four different ways an innovation can happen with the focus being that innovation is a key part of success, especially in a fast-paced world where ideas are quickly copied.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, this book didn’t live up to my expectations. I am a big believer in cross-discipline/industry learning and I was excited to see how Alistair would highlight the lessons of winners in business, politics and sport and then explore how they could be applied in other contexts. However, whilst there were glimpses, such as when the F1 team helped the toothpaste factory, overall the cross-learning opportunities were slim.

In addition, although this book was only written in 2015 it already felt dated due to the people Alastair choose to highlight. It is also fair to mention that there was a lot of male ‘Winners’ chosen to be highlighted with the only women being mentioned that I recall being Anna Wintour, Angela Merkel and The Queen.

At over 400 pages and with a lot of name dropping I found the book a slow read and felt my time could have been used better. However, if you are interested in political and sports leaders specifically then you may find it more interesting and useful than I did.

Like the sound of Winners: And How They Succeed. If so, why not buy a copy for yourself?

This book was read as part of PropelHer’s Book, which is a women-only non-fiction book club. If you are an ambitious women who want to read books to support your personal growth then you can find out more about PropelHer’s Book Club at www.propelher.co.uk.