How Will You Measure Your Life ?

Harward Business School Professor

Clay Christensens Address to

Harward Business School Class of 2010 He shared his lifes Most Precious Learnings.

Three Main Questions

I Ask three questions to my students at the end of the year. You may ask these questions to yourself/ 1. How can I be sure that I will be happy in my career ? 2. How can I be sure that my relationship with my spouse and family become enduring source of happiness ? 3. How can I be sure I will stay out of jail ?

Powerful Motivator:
Powerful Motivator in our life is not money. It is the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibility, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements, and be recognized for making difference to people.

The Profession of Management

My Conclusion: Management is the most noble professions if its practiced well.

of

No other occupation offers as many way to help others, learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement and contribute to the success of a team.

Deals and financials not ultimate satisfiers.

Doing deals and achieve very good financials dont yield the deep rewards and satisfaction that come from building up people.

Some of the Realities

At the Harward Business School, past student Re-unions, I have seen more and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced and alienated from their children.

The Reason behind that reality

They didnt keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy. They had given little thought to the purpose of their lives. They thought in future they may find out some more time to do this. At Harward they can focus on something else.

Time will never be Enormous with us

But. They were grossly mistaken. If they think that they will have more time and energy to reflect later, they are nuts, because life only gets more demanding, over a period of time. For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential.

Something unique & daring

When I was young, studying at Oxford, I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life. Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest techniques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. Can you imagine how challenging it would have been to take out one full hour during that highly competitive and demanding environment !!!!.

Purpose of Life

I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It always remains in front of me. My purpose grew out of my religious faith, but faith isnt the only thing that gives people direction. But without a purpose, life can become hollow.

Allocate Your Resources

Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy and talent ultimately shape your lifes strategy. How much do you devote to which Pursuits, will tell about your priority. Your priority will tell if ultimately you will become satisfied and happy OR not.

Drive to Overachieve
People who are driven to overachieve have this unconscious propensity to under invest in their families and overinvest in their careers. Such People allocate fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.

Which Tools to Use

Knowing what tools to wield to elicit the needed cooperation is a critical managerial skill. Impatient Leaders very fast go for coercion. But Great Leaders invest their efforts and wisdom much heavily on this. They would win this without coercion.

Culture
Culture defines the priority given to different issues in life and at work. Families have cultures, just as companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously or evolve inadvertently. But nothing great is created by accident. Very conscious efforts and hard choices are required for developing Culture.

How to live a life of Integrity

This theory addresses the third question I discuss with my students how to live a life of integrity (stay out of jail). Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of just this once. This temptation of just once must be avoided at all cost.

Personal Example
I had made a personal commitment to God at age 16 that I would never play ball on Sunday. For an important. Basket Ball final, the coach and team members said Cant you break the rule just this one time ? Had I crossed the line that one time, I would have done it over and over in the years that followed. You have got to define for yourself what you stand for, draw the line in a safe place, and stand by it.

Importance of Humility
People with Humility: Have a high level of self-esteem. For example, you would never steal from someone, because you respect that person too much. You would never lie to someone either. People with humility are not less effective, in fact they are more; but they do not make noise of this, which others make.

Be Humble
If you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited. Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves too. You need not put someone else down to feel good about yourself.

Chose the Right Yardstick

This past year I was diagnosed with Cancer and faced the possibility that my life would end sooner than I had planned. It taught me that my enormous material achievement seemed very trivial to me.

The Final Enlightenment

I have concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life is not dollars but the individual people whose lives I have touched. Do not worry about the individual prominence you have achieved. Worry about the individuals you have helped, become better people. Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live with values every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.

When, Where & Who ?

At the end, it is time for us to ask following three questions to ourselves as an extension to this deliberations.

If not now, When ? If not here, Where ? If not me, Who ?