What is Your Yardstick?

Many of my friends’ kids are graduating high school this month, and some of them graduated college. As I reflect back on my daughter’s high school graduation just last year, and my son’s approaching graduation in a couple of years, I was drawn to an interesting link that was highlighted in the Harvard Business Review. The link was blue, boldfaced, and underlined:  “Create a Life with Purpose” and naturally, I had to click on it. It took me to an article entitled, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” written by Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen.  He teaches a management theory class, and spends the semester taking students through models and theories that “help students think about the various dimensions of a general manager’s job in stimulating innovation and growth.” He uses this same model as a lens for our own lives, and asks the students the following questions to help them create a yard stick for measuring theirs.

The first question is: How can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Christensen references Frederick Herzberg who said that “the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements.” The yardstick becomes:  How can we help others learn, grow, and recognize them for their achievements?

The second question is:  How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? That’s a big one. Especially since we don’t really give it that much thought. We fall in love, get married, build careers, have children, and do our best along the way. Christensen asserted that when we have a strategy for our lives, in terms of keeping our purpose front and center at all times, we are better equipped to choose how we spend our time, energy, and talents in each of these endeavors. He also talks about “creating a culture” in your family where, from a very young age, children instinctively are respectful towards one another, obey their parents, and make good choices. These things don’t magically materialize. We parents must build that culture (give them roots) and then send them on their way (give them wings) when they leave our nests. The yardstick is: What is our ultimate purpose (for ourselves and for our family), and how are we living it daily?

The third, and final question, “how do I stay out of jail” seems humorous and out of place at first glance, but we know all too often that people get themselves on paths of self-destruction that can spin out of control quickly. To answer this question for ourselves, Christensen says that we must live lives of integrity, and that involves something called “the marginal cost doctrine”. He says it’s easier to hold to our principles 100% of the time than it is to hold them 98% of the time. Alternatively, when we employ the “just this once” mode of thinking, we marginalize ourselves and our lives because “just this once” is rarely just this once. The yardstick is: Define what you stand for, and then, stick to it.

The final takeaway in his article (which has recently evolved into a book by the same title), Christensen says, “the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars, but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.” If we use those words as our yardstick, our lives will be successful beyond imagination.