Choose the ambition
Choose an ambition worthy of sustained effort, because a demanding small project can consume as much energy as a large one.
Perimeter Books
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Perimeter Books / Business
What It Takes
Stephen A. Schwarzman
Schwarzman’s reflections on building a career and a financial business.
2019 · 384 pages · Hardcover
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Make it part of your reading
6–10 hoursEstimated reading time, at 40–60 pages an hour
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster2019 · selected edition
Explore Stephen A. Schwarzman ↗Books, writing & collected mentions
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Inside the book
What you’ll find inside.
Stephen Schwarzman uses episodes from his life to explain how he thinks about ambition, people, and institutional scale. The narrative follows his early work, his years at Lehman Brothers, and the creation of Blackstone with Pete Peterson, before widening into philanthropy and public life. Along the way, he emphasizes hiring, preparation, gathering information, and examining the downside of a decision before pursuing its rewards. The book mixes memoir with explicit lessons, making it useful to read on two levels: as one financier’s account of building a firm, and as a set of operating ideas to evaluate in organizations of very different sizes.
Who it’s for
Entrepreneurs and managers interested in recruiting, judgment, institution building, and the daily demands behind ambitious goals.
Ideas to examine
Take these into your reading.
Invest in people
Treat hiring and training as central management responsibilities rather than tasks to rush through while pursuing growth.
Examine the downside
Assess what can go wrong before being persuaded by the rewards of a promising opportunity.
Improve the process
Use failures to improve the decision process and its warning signals, instead of stopping at an explanation that assigns blame.
Your research notebook
Questions worth keeping.
- Which of Schwarzman’s management practices could work in a small organization, and which depend on access to substantial capital or influence?
- How would you design a review process that takes downside risk seriously while still allowing people to pursue ambitious ideas?
Save this title to add your own notes and reading progress.
The ideas, in conversation
Hear from the author.
Conversations are produced by the linked publishers and may cover the author’s broader work.
Go back to the evidence
Connect the book to your research.
Use another business account or a company filing to put a founder’s retrospective in context.
A different way into the subject
Continue the conversation.
Investing
Capital Allocators
Interviews with institutional investment leaders · Capital Allocators
Discussions with investment practitioners about allocating and managing capital.
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Business
Business Breakdowns
Company deep dives through expert interviews · Colossus
An examination of how individual businesses work.
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Keep your reading connected
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