Clay Christensen and Happiness
Tuesday, February 4th, 2020
While success is most people’s goal, how they define it varies widely.
A couple of weeks ago Clay Christensen, who pioneered disruption theory and wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma, died.
KG sent me an a16z editorial about his effect on business, but I think the 2010 HBR interview called How Will You Measure Your Life? is much better when it comes to success.
Why?
Because it lays out his business principles tweaked so a person could build a personal culture that would assure happiness.
When the members of the [HBS] class of 2010 entered business school, the economy was strong and their post-graduation ambitions could be limitless. Just a few weeks later, the economy went into a tailspin. They’ve spent the past two years recalibrating their worldview and their definition of success.
In the spring, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply them to their personal lives.
The students had a front row seat to watch the economy go from hot to frigid, which taught them that careers weren’t everything.
On the last day of class, I ask my 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 lighthearted, it’s not. 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.
Three simple questions, but three that few people, let alone MBA students, especially those at Harvard, focus on.
But what kind of life is it, if you are unhappy or have bad relationships with your family or cross the line, when with a little effort and planning you can avoid all three?
While Clay Christensen isn’t a silver life bullet, his thinking and approach come close.
