How Will You Measure Your Life?

by Clayton M. Christensen

so much of what’s become popular thinking isn’t grounded in anything more than a series of anecdotes. Solving the challenges in your life requires a deep understanding of what causes what to happen.

I had thought the destination was what was important, but it turned out it was the journey.

In order to really find happiness, you need to continue looking for opportunities that you believe are meaningful, in which you will be able to learn new things, to succeed, and be given more and more responsibility to shoulder.

Is this work meaningful to me? Is this 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? Am I going to be given responsibility?

Strategy almost always emerges from a combination of deliberate and unanticipated opportunities. What’s important is to get out there and try stuff until you learn where your talents, interests, and priorities begin to pay off. When you find out what really works for you, then it’s time to flip from an emergent strategy to a deliberate one.

“Which of these assumptions need to prove true in order for us to realistically expect that these numbers will materialize?” The assumptions on this list should be rank-ordered by importance and uncertainty. At the top of the list should be the assumptions that are most important and least certain, while the bottom of the list should be those that are least important and most certain.

Before you take a job, carefully list what things others are going to need to do or to deliver in order for you to successfully achieve what you hope to do. Ask yourself: “What are the assumptions that have to prove true in order for me to be able to succeed in this assignment?” List them. Are they within your control? Equally important, ask yourself what assumptions have to prove true for you to be happy in the choice you are contemplating. Are you basing your position on extrinsic or intrinsic motivators?

Real strategy—in companies and in our lives—is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about where we spend our resources.

how you allocate your own resources can make your life turn out to be exactly as you hope or very different from what you intend.

lifestyle demands can quickly lock in place the personal resource allocation process.

strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it’s effectively implemented.

You have to make sure that your own measures of success are aligned with your most important concern.

in the initial stages of a new business, good money from investors needs to be patient for growth but impatient for profit.

once a viable strategy has been found, investors need to change what they seek—they should become impatient for growth and patient for profit.

If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are it will already be too late.

the path to happiness is about finding someone who you want to make happy, someone whose happiness is worth devoting yourself to.

Given that sacrifice deepens our commitment, it’s important to ensure that what we sacrifice for is worthy of that commitment,

factors that determine what a company can and cannot do—its capabilities—fall into one of three buckets: resources, processes, and priorities.

figure out what capabilities you will need to succeed in the future. These must stay in-house—otherwise,

Resources are what he uses to do it, processes are how he does it, and priorities are why he does it.

Children will learn when they’re ready to learn, not when you’re ready to teach them; if you are not with them as they encounter challenges in their lives, then you are missing important opportunities to shape their priorities—and

In a start-up company where there are no processes in place to get things done, then everything that is done must be done by individual people—resources.

in established companies where much of the guidance to employees is provided by processes, and is less dependent upon managers with detailed, hands-on experience,

Tell them that if they’re not occasionally failing, then they’re not aiming high enough. Everyone knows how to celebrate success, but you should also celebrate failure if it’s as a result of a child striving for an out-of-reach goal.

Culture is a way of working together toward common goals that have been followed so frequently and so successfully that people don’t even think about trying to do things another way. If a culture has formed, people will autonomously do what they need to do to be successful.

culture is the unique combination of processes and priorities within an organization.

a culture happens, whether you want it to or not. The only question is how hard you are going to try to influence it.

This is what is so powerful about culture. It’s like an autopilot.

we didn’t have an existing business, how could we best build a new one? What would be the best way for us to serve our customers?”

Every time an executive in an established company needs to make an investment decision, there are two alternatives on the menu. The first is the full cost of making something completely new. The second is to leverage what already exists, so that you only need to incur the marginal cost and revenue. Almost always, the marginal-cost argument overwhelms the full-cost. For the entrant, in contrast, there is no marginal-cost item on the menu. If it makes sense, then you do the full-cost alternative. Because they are new to the scene, in fact, the full cost is the marginal cost.

100 Percent of the Time Is Easier Than 98 Percent of the Time Many of us have

None of those things, when they first happen, feels like a life-changing decision. The marginal costs are almost always low. But each of those decisions can roll up into a much bigger picture, turning you into the kind of person you never wanted to be.

The boundary—your personal moral line—is powerful, because you don’t cross it; if you have justified doing it once, there’s nothing to stop you doing it again. Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.

You can see the immediate costs of investing, but it’s really hard to accurately see the costs of not investing.

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

A likeness of a company is what the key leaders and employees want the enterprise to have become at the end of the path that they are on.

employees and executives need to have a deep commitment—almost a conversion—to the likeness that they are trying to create.

metrics enable everyone associated with the enterprise to calibrate their work, keeping them moving together in a coherent way.

The type of person you want to become—what the purpose of your life is—is too important to leave to chance. It needs to be deliberately conceived, chosen, and managed.

I genuinely believe that management is among the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers more ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team.

the only metrics that will truly matter to my life are the individuals whom I have been able to help, one by one, to become better people.