Book Review
Title :How Will You Measure Your Life: Finding
Fulfillment Using Lessons From Some of The World’s Greatest Businesses
Publisher :Harper Collins
Binding :Paperback
Year :2012
Pages :222
Price :Rs.399
Clayton Christensen, considered
to be among ther top 50 influential thinkers in the world today, along
with James Allenworth and Karen
Dillon,has written an extremely fascinating
and touching book on how to live life from its holistic perspective.In
the process, he applies some of the well-known theories and practices from the
world of business and management, citing examples from real life.The book is based on
his address to the students of Harvard Business School in 2010 where he talked
about the things that are most important in our lives.In addition to drawing on
the various theories, he tries to address the issues in life by posing three
questions, the answers of which will help many of the professionals from the trauma they usually face in their
careers.The three questions are:
How can I be sure that
1.I will be successful and happy
in my career?
2.My relationship with my spouse,
my children, and my extended family and
close friends become an enduring
source of happiness?
3.I live a life of integrity- and
stay out of jail?
Of course, Prof.Christensen is
very clear that dealing with these questions requires tremendous amount of hard
work and lots of time, but that will help all individuals to find an answer to
the final question: How will you measure your life?
While data collection and
information can help you in many ways, there are severe limitations for that in
our lives.Clay narrates the example of mankind’s attempts to fly.People to
believe that what allowed bird to fly
were wings and feathers.And by trying to fly with wings and feathers strapped
to their waist, men failed to fly.The problem was that people did not
understand the fundamental causal mechanism that enables certain creatures to
fly.According to Clay, the analogy applies to our lives.According to him,
“Solving the challenges in your life requires a deep understanding of what
causes what to happen”.He says that while one should learn all about that one
can learn from the past, that alone won’t solve the challenges that you face in
future.According to him, using a robust theory to “predict what will happen has
a much greater chance of success”.
The book starts with a discussion
on finding happiness in one’s career.For this, one has to set priorities,
balance the plans with the opportunities and to implement the plan by dedicating
resources.He goes on to assert that the reasons for one to get stuck in unhappy
careers and also unhappy lives is as a result of a fundamental misunderstanding
of what motivates us.Clay then exposes the incentive theory or agency theory
propagated by Jensen and Meckling which
states that people work in accordance with how you pay them by noting that some of the hardest –working people on the planet are employed with
non-profits where financial incentives rarely do exist.Hence, according to him,
true motivation is getting people to do something because they want to do it.Of
course, he pooh poohs the belief that money is the root cause of professional
unhappiness.The problems, according to him, starts when money becomes the
priority over all else.The hygiene factors such as money, status, job security
etc don’t matter much beyond a certain point.What really matters is the meaning
people feel about their work which encourages them to put in their best
efforts.For Clay, the theory of motivation suggests that one needs to ask
oneself a set of questions that we
normally don’t ask:Is the work meaningful to me?Is the job going to give me a
chance to develop?Am I going to learn new things?Will I have an opportunity for
recognition and achievement? etc etc
Christensen goes on to explain deliberate and emergent strategies in the
pursuit of a career.Too much of preparation and planning for a specific career at times will lead to
accepting positions that may not meet
your expectations of rewards, recognition and happiness.Opportunities usually
evolve in the environment which one will be able to seriously consider and adopt
if one follows an emergent strategy.
According to him, high achievers
focus too much on becoming the person they want to be at the job and ignore the
person they want to be at home or they
overinvest in their careers and underinvest in their families, depriving the
most important resources the life needs to happily flourish.Allocation of the
resources must be in line with one’s priorities.One must remember that while
work can bring the sense of achievement and fulfillment, it can never
bring the enduring happiness one can
find in the intimate relationships with your family and close friends.
Good companies don’t necessarily
have a winning strategy at the beginning and they usually are impatient for profit and patient for growth, and once the
strategy has been found viable, they become impatient
for growth and patient for profit.While
as executives, many of us take care of
the companies’ strategies in the right way by investing for future, very rarely
we invest for future happiness:we ignore birthdays and other celebrations in
the families, fail to respond to e-mails,and phone calls.The book goes on
building analogies between business theories and life in the ten chapters ending
with the perils of marginal thinking in both business and life.Very often we
all break certain rules and our own
ethical principles for just this once by
justifying small choices.But gradually this thinking can assume
large proportions bringing at
least bad reputation if not a jail term.
A wonderful short book, a must
read for busy business people and , executives who relentlessly follow a single-minded career pursuit,ignoring the
other side of our only one life and and for every person from every walks of life.It is books like these,
containing pearls of wisdom, that helps
us to firmly have our feet on the ground.
About The Authors
Clayton M.Christensen is the Kim B.Clark Professor at HBS, author
of seven books including the best seller The Innovator’s Dilemma;was rated as
the most influential thinker in 2011 by Thinkers 50.
James Allworth from Australia is a graduate of HBS, winner of Baker
Scholar Award, had stints with Booz & Company and Apple.
Karen Dillon was editor of Harvard Business Review until 2011.Was named as one of the world’s most influential & inspiring women in
2011 by Ashoka ChangemakeHERS.
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