Far from showing any "art" or "science" behind individual successes, Doctor Bono, does provide us with access to anecdotes told by some 47 persons who were willing to talk to him about their careers. Most are white males, whose "tactics" were largely focused on financial rewards across a wide range of endeavors -- sports, business, publishers, a lawyer (Cohn), a pop star (Sting).

From the beginning, Bono does not define "success", and avoids any argument with what makes a man "happy". He understands that luck, madness, talent, personality, and the circumstances operating in the field all play a role. What is helpful in this book is that he provides pithy lists of Tactics drawn from real life, in the following phases we can all reference:

Part One: Success - styles, stimulation, controls, timing, luck.
Part Two: Preparing for Sucess - focus, opportunity, ideas, risks.
Part Three: Strategy, plans, culture, teams, motivation, play
Part Four: Decision-making and Thinking (doing)

Dr. Bono ends by introducing his "supranational interdependent thinking organization (SITO) to provide thinking that is permanently neutral and independent." [220] He wants us to build "concept maps" together.