Successes like promotions and financial gain are merely another trophy.
If you don't care how you achieved success, you're more likely to make mistakes along the way, more likely to make bad decisions in an "end justifies the means" fashion, and less likely to be able to replicate how you achieved success should you need to.
Anything gained can be lost, so it pays to remember how you gained it in the first place, and it pays to garner influence along the way. Caring only for success strikes me as short-sighted and reckless, and each burnt bridge is a resource you can't use in the future.
How you get where you want to be is just as if not more important than it's conclusion.
