
Here is a brief overview of a very good article recently posted in the Harvard Business Review titled . . .
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Clay Christensen, Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard
Business School, and one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation
and growth, teaches a course that helps students understand what good management theory is and how it is built.
On the last day of class, Christensen asks his students to apply his principles and thinking to their personal lives and find the answers to 3 questions:
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How can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career?
- How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness?
- How can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?
How can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career?
- the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements.
How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness?
- Create a strategy for your life. A company’s strategy is determined by the types of initiatives that management invests in
- Because they focus on tangible and immediate returns, companies shortchange investments in initiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies
- A number of Christensen's HBS classmates come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children. Why? They didn’t keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy
- Having a clear purpose in life is essential, but it was something you must think long and hard about
- Without a purpose, life can become hollow
- Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy.
- Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. Opportunities that you never planned for emerge. Be careful not to misinvest your resources.
- When studying the root causes of business disasters, you’ll consistently find a "predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification." When studying personal lives through the same lens, and the same pattern emerges: "people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most."
- Create a Culture. Culture, can be a powerful management tool. "It dictates the proven, acceptable methods by which members of the group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems."
Families, like organizations have cultures. "Those cultures can be built consciously or evolve inadvertently." Power is the most simple tool a parent can use to gain a child's cooperation. At some point (often the teen years) using power no longer works. Upon reflection, the parents realize that they should have built a culture at home where the child instinctively behaves respectfully toward others, listens to their parents, and chooses the right thing to do.
"Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works." This must be designed into the family culture early on.
How can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?
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Avoid the "Marginal Costs" mistake. "When we choose between right and wrong. A voice in our head says, 'Look, I know that as a general rule, most people shouldn’t do this. But in this particular extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s OK.'"
"The marginal cost of doing something wrong 'just this once' always seems alluringly low. It suckers you in, and you don’t ever look at where that path ultimately is headed and at the full costs that the choice entails."
"It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place."
- Remember the Importance of Humility. A key characteristic of humble
people is a high level of self-esteem. "They knew who they were, and
they felt good about who they were." Humility is also defined "by the
esteem with which you regard others." When you respect others, good
behavior flows naturally.
- Choose the Right Yardstick. "This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success." Rather than measuring by the individual prominence you have achieved, measure by the individuals you have helped become better people.