How will you measure your life? Ashli Culver and Morgan Gocke

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen uses

 several theories to answer the question of how to find happiness in your career, happiness in your relationships, and how to stay out of jail.  Theses different theories are designed to help someone make good choices throughout different situations in life.  A good theory is not trying to change someone’s mind but instead applies to all companies of people because it is a general statement of what causes something and why.  These help to organize, explain, and predict life in order to get the most out of it. The sections of this book use overall strategies along with theories to provide information in leading a successful life both in business and life.

Happiness in 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 it when you find it.” –Steve Jobs

Waking up every morning being thankful for what your doing is an amazing feeling and this book will build strategy for you to do exactly that. The author states the definition of strategy as ‘what you want to achieve and how you will get there.’  Three main points are included that can help create a strategy- priority, opportunities and threats, and allocating your resources.

Priorities

What’s most important in your career? What truly motivates us? Motivation arises when we feel engaged with our work. Being pleased with our work will allow us to return home feeling accomplished and happy. Overall, the commitment with our work will allow us to return to it feeling motivated and energized. The book focuses on two main concepts; incentive theory and motivation theory.

The incentive theory describes the action of paying employees to do a specific job. Incentives or rewards can take the meaning out of work and rather than working for a purpose, someone may be working solely for the incentive or reward.  The motivation theory distinguishes between hygiene factors and motivation factors. 

Motivational factors include challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth. Motivational factors are less about the external stimulation, and more about what’s inside of you and your work. Hygiene factors are status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies and supervisory practices. Hygiene factors will not make one truly love their job, but allow one not to hate their job. Hygiene factors are much more a by-product of being happy with a job rather than the cause of it. If we can realize this we will be able to focus on the things that really matter in life.

            Christensen describes the motivational theory as the best way to encourage employees. If you have motivators at work, the theory suggests, you are going to love your job- even if you are not making piles of money. You are going to be much more motivated.

            “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

People who love what they do and think that their work has a purpose have a great advantage. They show their best effort at work and in return are very good at their job, which can lead to increasing hygiene factors.

Opportunities and Threats

It is a balance between our plans to find something we truly love doing with the opportunities and challenges that we never expected to arise in our lives.  Henery Mintzberg expresses that options for your strategy spring from two different sources- anticipated opportunities and unanticipated opportunities. Anticipated opportunities are those that pursue a deliberate and specific strategy. Unanticipated options emerge, as the deliberate plan is being implemented and is usually a cocktail of problems.

Emergent strategy is the day-to-day decisions that pursue unanticipated opportunities to resolve unanticipated problems. The emergent strategy becomes the new and improved deliberate strategy. We are constantly navigating a path by deciding between our deliberate strategies and the unanticipated alternatives that emerge.

The best strategies to finding happiness within your career frequently emerge from a combination of deliberate and unanticipated opportunities. It is important to realize that most events do not go as expected in life. Expecting to have a clear vision of where your life will take you is just wasting time.  Even worse, it may actually close your mind to unexpected opportunities.

Resource Allocation

Resource allocation is defined as a ‘look at what people actually do, rather than what they say they will do.”  We have resources including personal time, energy, talent and wealth, which we are using to try to grow several “businesses” in our personal lives. For example, rewarding relationships, a strong family, successful careers, etc. However, our resources are limited and our “businesses” are competing for them. We must prioritize what is important to us. How you allocate your resources is where the rubber meets the road. Strategy can only be implemented when your resources support them.

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.

Happiness in relationships:  

“The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family”. –Thomas Jefferson

Through looking at every aspect of our lives as a job this will help us to understand what will make others and ourselves happy.  When there is a job to be done it is simpler to solve what the other person needs instead of just guessing.  Often times the marketer or other person in a relationship assume they know what the consumer or other person in the relationship needs.  However they never take the time to ask.  This logic brings up the theory of “the job to be done”.  This theory can first be applied to businesses to understand the marketer and consumer relationship. 

A job to be done in the work place

IKEA produced a way of shopping unlike any other.  They realized that the consumer was buying the product to do a job.  Therefore they came up with a product to do the job of cheap, easy to put together furniture that is all in one location.  Since the store is so large they installed a restaurant and child-care facility to solve the job of a hungry person or busy mom.  This design creates a great experience keeping a costumer loyal.

When researching how to improve milkshake sells the question of what is the job of the milkshake needs to be answered.  The morning customers liked that the milkshake took a long time to drink keeping them entertained and full in the morning.  The afternoon customers liked milkshakes because they could tell their children yes to that instead of a new puppy. However they did not want to wait for the child to drink the whole shake.  The revelation was the need for a thick shake in the morning and less chunky half size option in the afternoon.

A job to be done in relationships

Stress can be placed on a person when they do not have a way to solve a job that needs to be done.  When this happens a product can be produced such the 12 minute games for a busy father to spend time with his children or V8 juice to make mother happy you are consuming vegetables.

If you understand the job you are being hired for in your personal and professional life the pay off will be enormous.  One of the most important jobs will be becoming someone’s spouse.  The best way to make them happy is to put yourself in their shoes and learn what job they need from you and vice versa.

Children’s relationship with school can determine their likely hood to stay in school.  Children have two fundamental jobs to be done; to feel successful and to have friends.  These can be found else where such as gangs therefore it is up to the school to provide a curriculum that makes a child feel successful while making friends.

The theory of capabilities suggests the need to be challenged and the more outsourcing the less development of capabilities.  Outsourcing is the idea of others doing either simple or complex tasks for you.  Outsourcing becomes a problem when your whole life is outsourced and you do not learn how to develop into a person that can survive on your own.  This over outsourcing tends to come from the parents. 

Capabilities in the workplace

Dell got themselves into trouble through outsourcing to a man named Asus in Taiwan.  The reason for this is it was cheaper for other countries to make the products but through doing this Asus learned enough to start his own company.  Therefore the point is that if we outsource everything we loose control of our future. 

Capabilities encompass three categories: resources, processes, and priorities.  The resources is what is given, processes is how you use the given, and priorities is why you use the givens.  The theory of capabilities gives companies the framework to determine when and when not to outsource.

Capabilities in relationships

What are our and our families’ capabilities? We cannot go back and develop missed capabilities but we can help others learn to develop them using resources, processes, and priorities.  Parents tend to outsource these aspects to themselves not teaching their children how to solve problems and build self -confidence.  The theory of Theseus’s ship raises the question if your children learn capabilities, priorities, and values from other people whose children are they?

The theory known as “right stuff” or the schools of experience will help increase the skills needed to be fully prepared for the career of your choosing.  This theory explains the difference of looking good on paper and having the experience to be the best at your job. 

The “right stuff” in the workplace:

Christensen looked to Morgan McCall of the university of southern California to describe this theory.  He says “they had honed skills along the way, by having experiences that taught them how to deal with setbacks or extreme stress in high-stakes situations”

The main idea is to choose experiences instead of glamorous options to help you in your ideal career.  Nolan Archibald did this through working in an asbestos mine to gain the skills of managing and leading people in difficult conditions.  He then became the youngest CEO of a fortune 500 company.

The “right stuff” in relationships:

Parents need to give there children experiences to learn so that they do not expect your help every time they need something.  Parents can also use outside sources to teach skills.

The theory of culture defines how a family or company self-manages itself.  There is cohesiveness in the values and goals of the organization.  There is a mutual understanding that once molded is difficult to break.  Culture occurs in repetition of solving problems or instilling a value.

Culture in relationships

Culture is the visible elements of a working environment.  In both family and employee relationships culture develops because each party is consistent in practicing the values they want their culture to be known for. 

Staying out of jail:

“The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts”. –C. S. Lewis

The final section of the book answers the question how to stay out of jail.  This can be accomplished through the theory “full versus marginal thinking” which also answers how can I live a life of integrity.

Full vs. marginal thinking in the workplace:

Blockbuster had a marginal viewpoint before they went bankrupt.  This meaning they did not think there was a need to change their ways when the competitor Netflix came up.  Netflix had a full viewpoint meaning they were constantly creating new business within the original business.  The full cost viewpoint is most often always the best because in the end it becomes the marginal cost when a new full develops.

Full vs. marginal thinking in relationships:

The “just this once” principle leads people with marginal thinking down destructive paths just to get ahead where they made a mistake or missed a full cost opportunity. 

The last piece of advice is to be committed to your commitments 100 percent of the time.  The author gives the example of him not playing in the college basketball final game on Sunday because he made a commitment to respect the Sabbath and not play ball on Sundays.

            Overall this book gives applications through theories that could be applied to anyone’s life now or in the future.  Christensen makes you think about what will make you happy and gives you the theories to do so.  He touches on main aspects of life such as career and relationships and living a life full of integrity through staying out of jail.  Theories are different ways of thinking that tend to make general statements about how to improve your quality of life. 

Interviews:

Questions:

1.    What are your main criteria in choosing a job? Why?

2.     What kinds of experiences help you do your best in jobs and relationships?

3.    Is there something that you have always been committed to and never broken?

Alexandre was the first person we interviewed. We met Alexandre at the restaurant Barracuda after class. We politely asked him if he would answer a few questions for us.  We typed our questions on an English-Spanish translator app to help us clarify certain words. His answers were very short because he struggled with English.  Although his answers were short, they were very powerful. His answer to the second question was very bold and interesting.  Alexandre’s answers are listed below.

1.     Choose something you like.

2.     All experiences help. Never regret anything, and learn from your mistakes

3.     Never cheated in a relationship

Isabeo and Caterina were interviewed at the same time. We met the girls at the school cafeteria. We decided to interview them since they spoke decent English and were friendly. We were hesitant about interviewing the girls together because we were afraid they would copy each other’s answers

 Isabeo’s answers are listed below:

1.    Enjoyment. I would prefer do something that I enjoy for less money rather than something I hate for more money.

2.    Observing hospitals to be around people with different backgrounds to help me not be as likely to treat someone different at work when confronted with someone unlike myself.

3.   Spending time with my family at Sunday evening dinners

Caterina’s answers are listed below:

1.  I would have to love going to work everyday and not dread it. I would have to be interested in the topics.

2. Talking to people and looking at other professions to gain different points of view on how to approach a problem

3.  My virginity until marriage

  Surprisingly the girls only had similar answers to the first question. Both of the girls had dreams of working in the medical field, but did not know what exactly they wanted to do.

The fourth person we interviewed was Fernando. We met him on the beach by our apartment. He expressed that he had studied in England for a semester. Because of this Fernando spoke understandable English, so we decided to interview him. Fernando’s answers are below:

1.     Good money, and career advancement so I can live a less worrisome life.

2.     My parents made me work as a child. This helped me know the value of money and gain communication skills. I believe my work experience sets me apart from others.

3.     I made a promise with my parents that I would be committed to getting the best education possible. Education is the one thing that no one can take away from me.

Questions:

1.Do you think incentives are a motivational tool for employers?

2. Compare and contrast the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Which motivation would be the most stimulating for you?

3. Are you more concerned with motivational or hygiene factors when choosing a job?

4. How do you think resource allocation shapes your life? Do you spend your resources on your top priorities?   

5.What job is school doing for you?

6.What is one capability you wished you had developed as child?

7. To not just look good on paper in a resume what experiences can give you the skills needed to be successful in your career?

8. In your future family what is one trait you want your families’ culture to encompass?

9. Would you take the risk in a business to take the full cost approach opposed to the marginal approach?

10. Have you used the “just this once principle” then done whatever action again?

11. What is something you can commit to 100% of the time?

12. How could you use these theories to improve your lives now and in the future?

Survey:

http://www.thehappinesscenter.com/survey/survey.php