Issue No. 443 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends a 2012 bestseller with three profound questions. (Sorry I’m eight years late on this!) And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here to read my recent review of Leighton Ford’s book, A Life of Listening: Discerning God's Voice and Discovering Our Own.
How to Stay Out of Jail!
Clayton Christensen’s 3 Big Questions
While locked down here in the Pearson Bunker, we’ve been talking about writing another book. No title yet, but here’s the big idea—If I’d Only Read This Book EARLIER in My Career, I Could Have Avoided This BIG Leadership Mistake!
But should I write about my Top-10, Top-50, or Top-100 big leadership mistakes? (Yikes. I have an abundance of examples.) Much too late, I’ve often read a book that would have given me greater clarity—and sooner.
Today’s book would certainly be on the list. Had I read this book in 2013, I would have given much better counsel to younger (and some older) leaders over the last eight years. I would have given less advice and simply said, “Just read this book!”
LOL! On Jan. 15, 2013, Chasz Parker, a faithful leader and reader, emailed me with this book recommendation:
HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE?
by Clayton M. Christensen,
James Allworth, and Karen Dillon
Good News. I immediately ordered the book back in 2013 (as Chasz instructed!).
Bad News. I set this gem aside and didn’t read it until this year during lockdown. Yikes. I wasted eight years! (Sorry, Chasz!)
Good News. I still have the two-page email from Chasz Parker—and, yes, he was right. This New York Times bestseller is amazing. I can’t stop talking about it. And gratefully, Chasz’s 2013 email included his review!
Note: On Jan. 24, 2020, an obituary in The Wall Street Journal reported that Clayton Christensen had died the day before. He had leukemia. They noted that Christensen was “a Harvard Business School professor and management guru…an authority on what he called disruptive technologies who became more widely known for offering his life as a case study.”
So here’s a summary of How Will You Measure Your Life? from Parker and Pearson. In the book and in his MBA classes, Christensen asked three big questions:
“How can I be sure that...
1. I will be successful and happy in my career?
2. My relationships with my spouse, my children, and my extended family and close friends becomes an enduring source of happiness?
3. I live a life of integrity—and stay out of jail?”
On the last day of class each year, Prof. Christensen discussed these three questions with his Harvard Business School students. Word got around and he was then invited to give the talk to the entire study body at the 2010 graduation ceremonies. Next, Karen Dillon, then editor of Harvard Business Review, asked him to write the article, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” for HBR. (Click here to read.) The book was released in 2012 (and yes, I finally read it in 2020!).
Chasz notes that when Christensen, also a HBS grad, attended his own class reunions—it concerned him that some classmates were experiencing personal and/or work traumas. Some stopped attending reunions out of embarrassment.
I appreciate bullet point book reviews and Chasz didn’t disappoint in his 2013 email to me. He wrote:
• We often find our life’s direction by following an “emergent” path. We make our plans and start out in what we believe is the way to go, but to be successful (like most businesses) we deviate from the plan to the opportunity. Christensen’s career aim was to be the editor of The Wall Street Journal! But he ended up as a prof at Harvard Business School. (And perhaps he had greater influence there. See two more books below.)
• Integrity is holding the line on key commitments. Many people who cross the line naively think they will only cross it once, and will step over and come back “just this time.” But then having crossed that line (which was once a monumental decision), further line-crossing seems insignificant—and each subsequent “small” infraction eventually erodes a person’s integrity—compounding into major losses (family, career, etc.).
• Read why Christensen says, “100 Percent of the Time Is Easier Than 98 Percent of the Time.”
• Must-read: Christensen’s insights on why “outsourcing” may undermine your family’s values (and your organization’s values)—and why you must keep certain competencies in-house, even if difficult.
• You must pursue your life purpose by determining what it is you are going to reflect in your character (whose image will be seen in you?), then commit to what it will take for this to happen, and create a means to track how you are doing in becoming more like your desired image.
Chasz suggested that this would be a great CEO book study—especially for young leaders. Interestingly, Christensen himself didn’t sense that his last-day-of-class talks to MBA students were getting much traction—until he announced he had been diagnosed with the same cancer that had taken his father. Then students engaged—and this book is the result.
Christensen quotes C.S. Lewis:
“The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
In addition to the powerful life lessons (poke-in-rib quotes on mistake-mistaking), every leader and manager will find delightful sidebars and rabbit trails on growing people and businesses in complex environments.
Example: Noting “the problem with principal-agent, or incentives, theory…” (why some managers still think money motivates), Christensen discusses Frederick Herzberg’s work on the psychology of motivation—another topic I wish I had known about years ago. Read “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” in the January 2003 issue of HBR. (In the book, Christensen also gives a nice compliment to nonprofit managers.)
Click here to view Clay Christensen on YouTube at a TEDx Boston presentation in 2012:
View Clay Christensen: “How Will You Measure Your Life?”
Picture this on your business card! Clayton Christensen was twice “Ranked #1 in the Thinkers50,” the global ranking of business leaders. He was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2019. You’ll appreciate his wisdom throughout the book. He writes, “There are no quick fixes for the fundamental problems of life. But I can offer you tools that I’ll call theories in this book, which will help you make good choices, appropriate to the circumstances of your life.”
Christensen writes that instead of telling Intel’s Andy Grove what to think during a consultation, “I taught him how to think. He then reached a bold decision about what to do, on his own.”
The co-authors add richness to this remarkable book. In the Acknowledgments section (who reads that?) I got teary-eyed reading the warmth expressed between the three authors (pages 207-221). James Allworth writes to Christensen, “Short of my parents, you have done more to change the way I think about the world than anyone.”
After meeting Christensen and learning about his three questions, co-author Karen Dillon recalls, “I stood in the parking lot of HBS a few hours later and knew I didn’t like my answers to those questions. Since then, I have changed almost everything about my life with the goal of refocusing around my family.”
Trust us—you will not stop talking about this book and it will cost you! I just ordered another copy for a younger leader today.
To order from Amazon, click on the title for How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (5 hours, 34 minutes).
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) When coaching and mentoring others (including family members), Christensen notes “…there is no one-size-fits-all approach that anyone can offer you. The hot water that softens a carrot will harden an egg.” What carefully selected books are you recommending this month to younger leaders (and other lifelong learners)?
2) Let’s be blunt here: How will you measure your life—and stay out of jail?
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Clayton Christensen on “Hiring a Milkshake to Do the Job”
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
The core competency in the Customer Bucket affirms, “We know our primary and supporting customers. We segment our customers to more effectively meet their unique needs. We listen to our customers. We are zealots for researching and understanding our markets.”
Clayton Christensen’s work on “What job did you hire that product to do?” disrupted the way organizations think about their customers. Enjoy these resources:
[ ] 7-MINUTE VIDEO: Clayton Christensen’s work on disruptive innovation opened doors to a wide array of businesses and organizations, including McDonald’s. Invest seven minutes and view this fascinating YouTube video, “Hiring a Milkshake to Do the Job.” (Nov. 2019)
View on YouTube: “Hiring a Milkshake to Do the Job”
[ ] BOOK: The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business, by Clayton M. Christensen (2002). (Order from Amazon.) “It is in disruptive innovations, where we know least about the market, that there are such strong first-mover advantages. This is the innovator’s dilemma.”
[ ] BOOK: Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice, by Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, Taddy Hall, and David S. Duncan (2016). (Order from Amazon.) The introduction, “Why You Should Hire This Book,” notes the importance of asking the right question: “What job did you hire that product to do?” (View the milkshake video.) And how about this on co-author David Duncan? “The clients he’s worked with tell me they’ve completely changed the way they think about their business and transformed their culture to be truly focused on customer jobs. (One client even named a conference room after him!)”
[ ] CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN (1952-2020) WEBSITE. In 2011, in a poll of thousands of executives, consultants and business school professors, Christensen was named as the most influential business thinker in the world. Click here to visit his website.
For more resources and books, visit the Customer Bucket.
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CFO PODCAST: John was interviewed by CFO David Beroth for the July podcast, Christian Nonprofit CFO. The topic: “7 Critical Financial Insights the Board Needs from the CFO.” Click here to listen.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. When you ask, “What job did you hire that product to do?”—your marketing and communication plans must also align with your answers. Need someone to coach you in how to think about this? Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video).
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