Purpose Driven Life

A very good article.. IMHO. I thought I will post it up as a constant reminder to myself.

23 Apr 2011 Figuring out the purpose of life To find happiness in our careers, we must know how to allocate our time, energy and talent A RECENT edition of Harvard Business Review carried an article, 'How Will You Measure Your Life?', written by Harvard Business School (HBS) professor Clay Christensen. Prof Christensen's class is structured to help his students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone, he attaches different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions from which a general manager can stimulate innovation and growth. In each session, they look at one company through the lenses of these theories - using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results. On the last day of the class, he asks his students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I'll be happy in my career. Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I'll stay out of jail? 'Though the last question sounds light-hearted, it's not,' said Prof Christensen. 'Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys - but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.' One of the theories, he said, that gives great insight on the first question - how to be sure we find happiness in our careers - is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn't money. It's the opportunity to learn, to grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognised for achievements. Prof Christensen told his students about his vision of sorts while he was running the company he founded before becoming an academic. 'In my mind's eye, I saw one of my managers leave for work one morning with a relatively strong level of self-esteem. Then I pictured her driving home to her family 10 hours later, feeling unappreciated, frustrated, underutilised, and demeaned. I imagine how profoundly her lowered self-esteem affected the way she interacted with her children. 'The vision in my mind then fast-forwarded to another day, when she drove home with greater self-esteem - feeling that she had learned a lot, been recognised for achieving valuable things, and played a significant role in the success of some important initiatives. I then imagined how positively that affected her as a spouse and parent. 'My conclusion: Management is the most noble of professions if it is practised well. No other occupation offers as many ways to others to learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognised for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team. 'More and more MBA students come to school thinking that a career in business means buying, selling, and investing in companies. That's unfortunate. Doing deals doesn't yield the deep rewards that come from building up people,' he said. Create a strategy for your life As for the second question - how can I ensure that my relationship with my family proves to be an enduring source of happiness - Prof Christensen said that just like in a company, it depends on how masterfully we allocate our resources. So if a company steers its investments to initiatives that offer the most tangible and immediate returns, they shortchange investments in initiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies. Over the years, he said he'd watched the fates of his HBS classmates from 1979 unfold. More and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children. 'I can guarantee you that not a single one of them graduated with the deliberate strategy of getting divorced and raising children who would become estranged from them. And yet a shocking number of them implemented that strategy? 'The reason? They didn't keep the purpose of their lives front and centre as they decided how to spend their time, talents and energy.' Having a clear purpose in life is essential. Prof Christensen recounted that when he was a Rhodes scholar, the academic programme was very demanding. But he decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why he was on this earth. It was a challenging commitment, because every hour spent doing that could have been used to study applied econometrics. But he stuck with it, and ultimately figured out the purpose of his 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. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It's the single most useful thing I've ever learned.' He promises his students that figuring out their purpose in life would be the most important thing they discovered at HBS. His purpose grew out of his religious faith. But faith isn't the only thing that gives people direction. One of his former students decided that his purpose was to bring honesty and economic prosperity to his country, and to raise children who were as capably committed to this cause, and to each other, as he was. After deciding on one's purpose in life, the next question is how to allocate one's personal time, energy and talent. 'People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers - even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.' If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you'll find this predisposition towards endeavours that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you'll see the same stunning and sobering pattern; people allocate fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most, said Prof Christensen. 'Marginal costs' mistakes Finally, the answer to question three is to avoid the 'marginal costs' mistakes. Unconsciously, we often employ the marginal cost doctrine in our personal lives 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, said Prof Christensen. 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. 'Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of 'just this once'.' Timely reminders, indeed.