Who is Clifford Hudson?
Clifford Hudson is a master of none. After graduating from law school and several years as a practicing attorney, he was hired as the head of the legal department for Sonic Corp in 1984.
He became president and chief executive officer in 1995, and was named chairman in January 2000. During his tenure, the company grew from a nationwide total of 1,428 locations in 1995 to more than 3,500 today, with locations in 45 of the 50 US states. In addition, average drive-in sales have increased by 65% and system-wide sales from $880 million to $4.5 billion. The company’s enterprise value grew from approximately $200 million to more than $2.3 billion, when it was acquired by Inspire Brands in 2018.
Beyond the boardroom, Clifford is a fierce advocate for public service. From 1994 to 2001, he served as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), a presidential appointment. He is also a former trustee of the Ford Foundation in New York and is a past chairman of the board of trustees of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Additionally, he led a ten-year, $500 million effort to fundamentally improve a 40,000 student, inner-city Oklahoma City Public School system, for which he received the 2012 David T. Kearns Award for Excellence and Innovation in Education.
Master of None: How a Jack-of-All-Trades Can Still Reach the Top
In his bestselling Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell introduced readers to the 10,000-hour rule—the foundation of success in any endeavor. But as Clifford Hudson reveals, there are serious pitfalls to this rule. What happens to those who spend years trying to achieve something that doesn’t quite pan out? Do you really have to grind down the same path for many years, sacrificing priorities to become successful?
In this thought-provoking memoir, Hudson asks whether or not mastery is even necessary to succeed. Most people don’t need to be experts in their field. Yes, the successful know more than the average person about a particular topic, and they often possess a better-than-average ability with a particular skill set; but not everyone who is successful is an expert, he makes clear.
More importantly, in today’s technology-driven environment, change is the only constant, including the nature of work and the skills required to do it. Over-investing in expertise is often riskier than learning to be adaptive and open to new knowledge, ideas, and skills. Experience can also lead to overconfidence. And yet we continue to deeply value the expertise ideal.
In Master of None, Hudson turns expertise on its head and shows that by embracing variety and becoming more versatile, anyone can succeed and become more open to different opportunities in life. To do so, he provides three basic rules that will see any professional through:
- Don’t plan, explore
- Don’t specialize, generalize
- Don’t keep your head down, turn it up toward opportunity
Groundbreaking and thought-provoking, Master of None is a new way forward to help businesses and professionals at all levels thrive.
Where to find Clifford Hudson
Twitter
LinkedIn
Website
Amazon, Master of None
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