By Manuel “Bobby” M. Orig, Director, ApoAgua

If you’re not guided by a clear sense of purpose, you’re likely to fritter away your time and energy on obtaining the most tangible, short-term signs of achievement, not what’s really important to you.

By taking the time to figure out your purpose in life is, you will look back on it as the most important thing you will have learned.

In the end, you will be judged a success by the metric that matter most – your purpose in life.

This is a summary of the amazing book ‘How Will You Measure Your Life’. In the words of Forbes magazine, it is “one of the more surprisingly powerful books of personal philosophy of the 21st century.”

The lead author, Clayton M. Christensen, was a professor at the Harvard Business School and developed the theory of “disruptive innovation.” In 2011 he was named as the world’s most influential business thinker by Thinkers 50.

His co-authors are James Allworth, a fellow at the Harvard Business School, and Karen Dillon, a former editor of the Harvard Business Review.

The stories in this book are from the life and experiences of the lead author, Christensen. He died at age 67 in January 2020. I will refer to him by his nickname, Clay.

INTRODUCTION

On the last day of the ‘Building and Sustaining Successful Enterprises’ MBA course he was teaching at the Harvard Business School, Clay tells his students what he observed among his own classmates when he was still in college.

Clay’s classmates seemed to be doing extremely well; they had great jobs, some were working in exotic locations, and most have married good-looking spouses.

Among his classmates were executives at renowned consulting and finance firms, others were on their way to top positions in Fortune 500 companies, and some were already successful entrepreneurs. Their lives seemed destined to be fantastic on every level.

But on their tenth-year reunion, things that Clay never expected became increasingly common.

Despite such professional accomplishments, many of them were clearly unhappy. Behind the façade of professional success, there were many who did not enjoy what they were doing for a living. And there were numerous stories of failed marriages.

Clay’s classmates were not only some of the brightest but also some of the most decent people. At graduation, they had plans and visions for what they would accomplish in their careers and in their personal lives.

But something had gone wrong for some of them along the way. Their personal relationships had begun to deteriorate even as their professional lives blossomed.

WHY STUDY THEORIES?

Understanding what causes problems that trapped some of Clay’s classmates is important not just for those who have deviated from the path that they planned to follow but for those whose lives are still in the right path — as well as for those whose journeys are just beginning.

Theories are statements of what causes things to happen and why.

When students understand these theories, they put them “on” — like a set of lenses — to examine a case about a company. They discuss what each of the theories can tell us about why and how the problems and opportunities emerge in companies.

The students then use the theories to predict what problems and opportunities are likely to occur in the future for that company, and use the theories to predict what actions the managers will need to take to address them.

Clay summarized what so frequently happens in the lives of graduates, and he and his students took the discussions further by examining the most fundamental element of organizations: individuals.

The discussions explore not what they hope will happen to individuals but rather what the theories predict will happen to individuals as a result of the different decisions and actions that they have taken in their lives.

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS GOOD ADVICE?

There are probably dozens of well-intentioned people who have advice for how you should live your life, how you should make your career choices, and how you should make yourself happy. If you walk into any bookstore, you will find many books about how you can improve your life. You know intuitively that all these books cannot be right.

How do you know what is good advice — and what is bad?

There are no easy answers to life’s challenges. The quest to find happiness and meaning in life is not new. Humans have been pondering the reason for our existence for thousands of years.

What is new, however, is how some modern thinkers address the problem. They take hard problems — one that people can go through an entire life without ever resolving — and offer a quick fix.

WHY YOU SHOULD LEARN THEORIES

But there are no quick fixes to the fundamental problems of life.

People often think that the best way to predict the future is by collecting as much data as possible before making a decision. But this is like driving a car looking only at the rear-view mirror. Because data is only available about the past.

Indeed, while information and experiences can be good teachers, there are many times in life where we simply cannot afford to learn on the job. For example, you don’t go through multiple marriages in order to learn how to be a good spouse. Or wait until your last child has grown up in order to master parenthood.

That is why theory is so valuable — it can explain what will happen before you experience it.

Consider an example. The history of mankind’s attempts to fly.

Early researchers observed strong correlations between being able to fly and having feathers and wings. Stories of men attempting to fly by strapping on wings date back hundreds of years. They were essentially replicating what they believed allowed the birds to fly — wings and feathers.

But when humans attempted to follow what they believed were “best practices” of the most successful flyers by strapping on wings, then jumping off tall buildings and mountains, and flapping hard…they failed.

The mistake was although feathers and wings were correlated with flying, would-be aviators or flyers did not understand the fundamental causal mechanism — or what actually causes something to happen — that enabled certain creatures to fly.

Bats and some lizards have wings but no feathers, yet they can fly.

THE POWER OF THEORY IN OUR LIVES

How do fundamental theories relate to finding happiness in our lives?

The appeal of easy answers — of strapping on wings and feathers — is  alluring.

Theories are powerful tools. You will see that without theory, we are at sea without a navigation instrument.  If we cannot see what is on the horizon, we are relying on chance — on the currents of life — to guide us.

Good theory helps people steer decisions — not just in business, but in life.

You should learn all that you can from the past; or from scholars who have studied it. But this does not solve the fundamental challenge of what information and what advice you should accept, and which you should ignore as you embark into the future.

Instead, using robust theory to predict what will happen has a much greater chance of success.

Theories  are based on a deep understanding of human endeavor — what causes what to happen, and why. They have been rigorously examined and can help all of us with decisions that we make every day in our lives.

FINDING HAPPINESS IN YOUR CAREER

The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

– Steve Jobs

When you were young and someone asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, anything seemed possible. Policeman. Doctor. Astronaut. Your answers were guided simply by what you thought would really make you happy. There were no limits.

There are a determined few who never lost sight of aspiring to do something that is truly meaningful to them.

But for many of us, as the years go by, we allow our dreams to be peeled away. We pick jobs for the wrong reasons and then we settle for them.

Those who start down the path of compromise will never make it back. Considering the fact that you will likely spend more of your waking hours at your job than in any other part of your life, it’s a compromise that will always eat at you.

But you need not resign yourself to this fate.

A STRATEGY

At the basic level, a strategy is what you want to achieve and how you will get there.

In the business world, strategy is the result of multiple influences:

• what a company’s priorities are,
  
• how a company responds to opportunities and threats along the way, and
  
• how a company allocates its precious resources.

These things all continuously combine to create and evolve a business strategy.

This same business strategy-making process is at work in every one of us as well. We have intentions for our careers. Against our intentions, opportunities and threats emerge that we have not anticipated. And how we allocate our resources —  our time, talent, and energies — is how we determine the actual strategy of our lives.

You can leverage theories to form your strategy in answering the question “How can I find happiness in my career?”

• The starting point in our journey to find happiness in a career is a discussion of priorities. These are, in effect, your core decision-making criteria: what is most important to you in your career?
  
• Second, we need to balance our plans to find something that we truly love doing with the opportunities and challenges that we never expected to arise in our lives.
  
• Finally, we execute our strategy.

The only way a strategy can be implemented is if we dedicate resources to it. Good intentions are not enough. You are not implementing the strategy that you intend if you don’t spend your time, your money, and your talent consistent with your intentions.

In your life, you are going to face constant demands for your time and attention. How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whatever screams the loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fastest reward.

That is a dangerous way to build strategy.

All of these factors — priorities, balancing plans with opportunities, and allocating your resources — combine to create your strategy.

If you can understand and manage the strategy process, you will have the best shot at getting it right — of having a career that you will truly love and make you happy.

WHAT MAKES US TICK

The Importance Of Getting Motivation Right

It is impossible to have a meaningful conversation about happiness without understanding what makes each of us tick or what motivates us. When we find ourselves in unhappy careers — and even unhappy lives — it is often the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of what really motivates us.

Michael Jensen and William Meckling, are the authors of the incentive theory.  

The essence of this theory is that people work in accordance with how you pay them. The thinking is that what causes people to focus on one thing and not others is financial incentives.

But can you trust the incentive theory?

One of the best ways to probe whether you can trust the advice offered by the incentive theory is to look for anomalies — or something that the theory cannot explain.

There are powerful anomalies that the incentive theory cannot explain.

For example, some of the hardest working people in the world are employed in non-profit and charitable organizations. Some work in the most difficult conditions, in countries that are beset in disaster, famine, disease. Yet it’s rare to hear these people complain that they need incentives in order to be motivated.

How then do we explain what is motivating them if it is not money or incentives?

There is another theory, known as the motivation theory, that puts into question the validity of the incentive theory. It acknowledges that you can pay people to do what you want — over and over again.

But incentives are not the same as motivation. True motivation is getting people to do something because they themselves are the ones who want to do it. This type of motivation persists in good times or bad times.

Frederick Herzberg is the originator of the motivation theory.

The motivation theory distinguishes between two types of factors: hygiene factors and motivation factors.

The motivation theory maintains that there are elements of the work that, if not done right, will cause people to be dissatisfied. They are the job elements that give people the sense that they are being treated fairly. They are called the hygiene factors.

Hygiene factors are things like status, compensation, job security, and company policies. They come from external forces or from outside the person.

So, what are the factors that will truly, deeply satisfy people, the factors that will cause them to love their jobs? These are what Herzberg calls the motivators.

Motivation factors include things like challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth. They are factors that give people the sense that they are making a meaningful contribution. They are factors that arise from intrinsic conditions or from the person himself. Not from external factors.

The lens of the motivation theory gave Clay real insight into the choices that his classmates made in their careers after they graduated. While many of them find themselves in careers that were highly motivating, his sense is that a number of them did not.

How is it that there are people who seem to have lots of potentials but end up making deliberate choices that leave them unfulfilled?

The motivation theory sheds light on this. Many people choose careers using the hygiene factors as the primary criteria. Income was often the most important of these.

It was not too long, however, before some of Clay’s classmates privately admitted that they had actually begun to resent the jobs they have taken — for what they now realized were the wrong reasons.

They made choices early on because of  the hygiene factors, not true motivators.

The point is not that money is the root cause of professional unhappiness. It is not. The problems start occurring when it becomes the priority above all else, when the hygiene factors are satisfied but the quest remains only to make more money.

But the motivation theory works for everyone. If you are going to get motivators at work, Herzberg theory suggests, you’re going to love your job  —  even if you are not making piles of money.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PURPOSE

That business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important cause of business frustration and failure.
– Peter Drucker

Every company has a purpose. It rests in the priorities of the company and effectively shapes the rules by which managers and employees decide what is most important in each situation.

There are some managers and employees who believe that the company is there solely to help them achieve their personal ends. For these people, the company essentially exists to be used. Enterprises with such de facto purposes usually fade away and — very quickly — the company along with its products and services are forgotten.

But if an organization has a clear and compelling purpose, its impact and legacy can be extraordinary. The purpose of the company will serve as a beacon, focusing employees’ attention on what really matters. Apple and Starbucks are examples of this.

Without a purpose, on what basis would business executives be deciding which is the best outcome?

The same is true with individuals. Purpose is the critical ingredient that guides people in making decisions in life.

Clay described how he developed his purpose and the process that he used to find his own purpose in life.

THE THREE PARTS OF PURPOSE

A useful statement of purpose for a company needs three parts.

• The first is a LIKENESS. By analogy, a master painter often will create a pencil likeness of an image he has seen in his mind, before he attempts to paint that image. The likeness is what managers and employees hope they will have actually built the company to become when they reach each critical milestone in their journey.
  

• The second is COMMITMENT. For a purpose to be useful, executives and employees need to have a deep commitment - almost a conversion — to the likeness they are trying to create.
  
• The third is METRICS. The third part of a company’s purpose is one or a few metrics by which managers and employees can measure their progress in creating the likeness.

These three parts — likeness, commitment, and metrics — comprise a company’s purpose. Purpose must be deliberately conceived and chosen, and then pursued.

When it is in place, however, then how the company gets there is typically emergent — as opportunities and challenges emerge and are pursued.

In the same way the type of person you want to become — what the purpose of your life is needs to be deliberately conceived, chosen, and managed. However, the opportunities and challenges in your life that allow you to become that person will, by their very nature, be emergent.

Clay has a deep respect for the emergent process by which strategy coalesces — and, as a consequence, how he pursued his purpose has evolved. Sometimes unanticipated crises and opportunities have felt like a wind in his back as he worked toward his purpose.

HOW CLAY CAME TO UNDERSTAND HIS PURPOSE

Clay found that the first part, the likeness or the person he wants to become, was the simplest of the three parts, and was largely an intellectual process.

The starting point for Clay was his family. He was very much a beneficiary of strong family values, priorities, and culture. He was born into a wonderful family, and as he grew up, his parents planted the seed of faith within Clay.

However, it was not until he reached twenty-four years of age that he came to know his likeness for himself.

Clay had used what he learned from his family, and from scriptures and prayer, to understand the kind of person that he wants to become — which to him also entails the kind of person God wants him to become.

Clay was also cognizant of the fact that he is a professional man. He genuinely believes that management is among the most noble of professions. His view is that no other profession offers him more ways to help others to learn and grow and contribute to the success of a team. He drew heavily upon this learning to mold his likeness.

From these parts of his life, Clay distilled the likeness that he wanted to become:

• A man dedicated to improve the lives of other people.
  
• A kind, honest, forgiving, and selfless husband, father, and friend.
  
• A man who just doesn’t believe in God, but who believes God.

We have to recognize that many of us might come to similar conclusions, as Clay about the likeness we aspire to. It’s a form of setting goals for yourself — the most important ones you’ll ever set. But the likeness you draw will only have value if you create it for yourself.

BECOMING COMMITTED

But how do you become so deeply committed to your purpose that they guide what you prioritize  — and drive what you will do, and what you will not do?

These were the events that led Clay to firm up his commitment to his likeness.

When Clay was in his twenties, he enjoyed an extraordinary opportunity to study at Oxford University in England. After he had lived there for a few weeks, it became clear to him that adhering to his religious beliefs in that environment was going to be very inconvenient. He decided as a result that the time has come for him to learn for certain, whether what he had sketched out as his likeness – the person he wants to become – was actually who God wanted him to be.

Accordingly, he reserved time from eleven in the evening until midnight, every night to read the scriptures, to pray, and to reflect about these things. He explained to God that he needed to know whether the likeness he wants to become were true — and what they implied for the purpose of his life.

Each of us may have a different process for committing to our likeness. But what is universal is that your intent must be to answer this question: Who do I truly want to become?

If you begin to feel the likeness you have sketched out for yourself is not right — that it is not the person you want to become — then you must revisit your likeness. But if it becomes clear that it is the person you want to become, then you must devote your life to becoming that person.

As Clay followed this process, it became clear to him through feelings that he sensed in his heart and words that came into his mind that he had his likeness correct. It confirmed to him that the characteristics he sketched as his likeness – being kind, being honest, being a forgiving and selfless person – were the right ones. Clay saw in his likeness a clarity and magnitude that truly changed his heart and life.

FINDING THE RIGHT METRIC

To recall, the first part of Clay’s quest to know his purpose in life is to be clear about the likeness that he wanted to become.

The second, is to make that likeness come true.

The third part of Clay’s life purpose was to understand the metric by which his life will be measured. Clay took the longest time to figure this out. Clay did not come to understand this until fifteen years later after his experience at Oxford University.

Clay was driving to work one morning when he got a sudden and very strong impression that we has going to receive an important new assignment from his church, which has no professional clergy and asks every member to shoulder important duties. A couple of weeks later, Clay learned that a particular church leader was going to leave. He put two and two together and concluded that this was the opportunity that he received the impression about.

But that was not what happened. Clay learned that another man was asked to serve in that position. Clay was crushed. Clay felt that he would have done more good for more people if he were in the position.

This threw Clay into a two-month period of crisis.

THE METRIC BY WHICH LIFE WILL BE MEASURED

But as has been the case in the most difficult parts of Clay’s life, this personal confusion precipitated an insight that became a third element of his purpose – the metric by which his life will be measured. He realized that constrained by the capacities of our mind, we cannot always see the big picture.

Clay explains this insight in the context of managing a business.

The manager of a business cannot see the complete health of the company  from specific customers; he or she needs to have things aggregated as revenues, costs, and profits.

In short, the manager needs to aggregate to see the big picture. This is far from an accurate way to measure things, but this is the best that we can do.

Because of this implicit need for aggregation, we develop a sense of hierarchy: people who preside over more people are more important than people who are leaders of fewer people. For example, a CEO is more important than a general manager; a general manager is more important than the sales manager, and so on.

Clay realized that God, in contrast has no organizational charts. He does not need to aggregate anything beyond the level of an individual person in order to comprehend completely what is going on among humankind.

God’s only measure of achievement is the individual.

Clay’s perspective is that when he has his interview with God, their conversation will focus on individuals whose self-esteem he was able to strengthen, whose faith he was able to reinforce, and whose discomfort he was able to assuage. A doer of good regardless of what assignment he had. Clay believes that these are the metrics that matter most in measuring his life.

Clay shares that as he has gone through life as a father, a husband, an executive, an entrepreneur, and an academic, the knowledge of purpose he has derived has been critical. As he explains it, without this knowledge how could he ever have known how to put the important things first?

Many of us have convinced ourselves that we are able to break our purpose in life “just this once.” In our minds, we can justify these small choices. None of these things, when they happen, feels like a life-changing decision.

Clay came to understand the potential damage of “just this once” when he was in England playing on his university’s basketball team. He and his teammates killed themselves all season and their hard work paid off — they made it all the way to the finals.

But then he learned that the championship was scheduled to be played on a Sunday. This was a problem.

He made a personal commitment to God that he would never play ball on Sunday because it is a Sabbath. So he went to his coach before the tournament finals and explained his situation. His coach was incredulous! His coach told him “I don’t know what you believe but I believe that God will understand.” His teammates were stunned, too. Clay was the starting center and to make things more difficult, the backup center dislocated his shoulder.

It was a difficult decision to make. The team would suffer without him. His teammates were his best friends and they were dreaming about making it to the championship all year long.

Clay is a deeply religious man so he went to pray about what he should do. As he knelt to pray he got a very clear feeling that he needed to keep his commitment. So he told his coach that he cannot play in the championship game.

In so many ways, that was a small decision. In theory, surely he could have crossed over the line just that one time and then not do it again. But looking back on it, Clay realized that resisting the temptation of “just this once” has proved to be the most important decision in his life. Why? Because life is just one unending stream of “just this once” extenuating circumstances. Had he crossed the line that one time, he would have done it over and over again.

And it turned out his teammates didn’t need him because they won the championship.

Clay learned that: it is easier to hold on to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of the time.

CONCLUSION

Fast-paced careers, family responsibilities, and tangible rewards of success tend to swallow up time and perspective. Clay warned his students that if they are not crystal clear about their purpose in life, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the rough seas of life.

What’s true for Clay’s students and classmates is true for all of us. If we take the time to figure out our purpose in life is, we will look back on it as the most important thing we will have learned.

And you will be able to answer the most important question, “How will you measure your life?”

Let me leave you with these poignant quotes from the book:

• “It is easier to hold your principles 100 percent of the time, than it is to hold it 98 percent of the time.”
  
• “Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of deepest joy in our lives.”
  
• “If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are it will already be too late.”
  
• “I had thought the destination was what was important, but it turned out it was the journey.”
  
  

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