Money Quotes: How Will You Measure Your Life (assembled by Symbolist)

Money Quotes
“How Will You Measure Your Life?”
Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon
www.symbolist.com

Money Quotes: “How Will You Measure Your Life?”
Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon 2
www.symbolist.com
The following pages include some choice
quotes from the book “How Will You
Measure Your Life.” This book is an
extension of a commencement speech
that Clayton Christensen gave to the
Harvard Business School 2010 spring
graduating class.
The result is either a self-help book
masquerading as a business book or a
business book masquerading as a self-
help book.
Either way it is a wonderful book that
looks at life, happiness, meaning, and
integrity through Mr. Christensen’s familiar
lens of “business” and creates some
guidelines (not rules) that can help all of
us find a more honest and enjoyable path
through life and through work.
The book is really three sections:
1. Finding happiness in your career -
the true basis of motivation and
reward
2. Finding happiness in your
relationships - spending time
consistent with your priorities
3. Living with integrity - the pitfalls of
marginal thinking
Using this book as a management tool
will pay dividends for many years.
I’ve summarized some of quotes that
resonated with me in this slide
presentation. These are not exhaustive…
there are many, many other ideas and
points of view that are important.
I will be incorporating a lot of what is in
this book into my own day-to-day activity
– and in how I deal with my family, friends
and co-workers.
I hope this little sampler gives you a
reason to buy the book. It is well worth
your time – but only if you do something
with it!
There is a lot of opinion in this book.
Opinion informed by facts, research, data
and intelligence. But at the end of the
day it is one (actually three) man’s opinion
on how to find meaning and happiness in
your life.
There are many books written that profess
to have the “5 Ways to Drive
Engagement” or the “3 Simple Rules of
Leadership.” This isn’t that kind of book.
I do think that as a manager, as an
employee as an executive – this book
provides a pretty strong outline of the
things you can do for your self – and
more importantly with your subordinates,
partners and colleagues – to drive greater
emotional connection to your work – and
their work.
This book can, I believe, do more for
engagement in your company than
foosball tables and free beer.

Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon 3
www.symbolist.com
Herzberg notes the common assumption that job satisfaction is one big
continuous spectrum—starting with very happy on one end and reaching
all the way down to absolutely miserable on the other—is not actually the
way the mind works.
Instead, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are separate, independent
measures.
This means, for example, that it’s possible to love your job and hate it at
the same time.

4
If you instantly improve the
hygiene factors of your job, you’re
not going to suddenly love it.
At best, you just won’t hate it
anymore.
The opposite of job dissatisfaction
isn’t job satisfaction, but rather an
absence of job dissatisfaction.
www.symbolist.com

5
So, what are the things that will truly,
deeply satisfy us, the factors that will
cause us to love our jobs?
These are what Herzberg’s research
calls motivators.
Motivation factors include
challenging work, recognition,
responsibility, and personal growth.
www.symbolist.com

6
Motivation is much
less about external
prodding or
stimulation, and
much more about
what’s inside of
you, and inside of
your work.
www.symbolist.com

7
The point isn’t that money is
the root cause of professional
unhappiness. It’s not. The
problems start occurring
when it becomes the priority
over all else, when hygiene
factors are satisfied but the
quest remains only to make
more money. Even those
engaged in careers that seem
to specifically focus on
money, like salespeople and
traders, are subject to these
rules of motivation—it’s just
that in these professions,
money acts as a highly
accurate yardstick of
success.
www.symbolist.com

8
We should always remember that beyond a certain point,
hygiene factors such as money, status, compensation, and job
security are much more a by-product of being happy with a job
rather than the cause of it.
www.symbolist.com

9
The theory of motivation suggests you need to ask yourself a different set of questions than most of us are used to
asking.
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?
These are the things that will truly motivate you. Once you get this right, the more measurable aspects of your job
will fade in importance.
www.symbolist.com

10
I used to think that if you cared for other people, you need to study
sociology or something like it. But when I compared what I imagined
was happening in Diana’s home after the different days in our labs, I
concluded, if you want to help other people, be a manager. If done
well, management is among the most noble of professions.
www.symbolist.com

11
…Strategy is not a discrete
analytical event—something
decided, say, in a meeting of
top managers based on the
best numbers and analysis
available at the time.
Rather, it is a continuous,
diverse, and unruly process.
www.symbolist.com

12
Real strategy—in
companies and in our
lives—is created
through hundreds of
everyday decisions
about where we spend
our resources.
www.symbolist.com

13
In fact, if you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over
you’ll find a predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate
gratification over endeavors that result in long-term success.
www.symbolist.com

14
Professor Amar Bhide showed in his Origin and Evolution of New Business that
93 percent of all companies that ultimately become
successful had to abandon their original strategy
— because the original plan proved not to be viable.
www.symbolist.com

15
The only way to have
those relationships
bear fruit in your life
is to invest long
before you need
them.
www.symbolist.com

16
Managers can’t be there to watch over
every decision as a company gets
bigger. That’s why the larger and more
complex a company becomes, the
more important it is for senior
managers to ensure employees make,
by themselves, prioritization decisions
that are consistent with the strategic
direction and the business model of the
company. It means that successful
senior executives need to spend a lot
of time articulating clear, consistent
priorities that are broadly understood
throughout the organization.
www.symbolist.com

17
When you boil it down, the
factors that determine what
a company can and cannot
do—its capabilities—fall into
one of three buckets:
www.symbolist.com
resources,
processes,
and priorities.

18
Resources are what he
uses to do it,
processes are how he
does it,
and priorities are why
he does it.
www.symbolist.com

19
Self-esteem—the sense
that “I’m not afraid to
confront this problem
and I think I can solve
it” — doesn’t come
from abundant
resources.
Rather, self-esteem
comes from achieving
something important
when it’s hard to do.
www.symbolist.com

20
…it’s common to describe
culture as the visible elements
of a working environment:
casual Fridays, free sodas in the
cafeteria, or whether you can
bring your dog into the office.
But as MIT’s Edgar Schein—one
of the world’s leading scholars
on organizational culture—
explains, those things don’t
define a culture. They’re just
artifacts of it.
www.symbolist.com

21
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.
www.symbolist.com

22
It’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the
time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time.
www.symbolist.com

23
Management doesn’t
need to dive into the
details of every decision,
because the culture —
almost as an agent of
management — is present
in the details of every
decision.
www.symbolist.com

24
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.
www.symbolist.com

25
Prepared by Symbolist…
We make your workplace a better place to be.
www.symbolist.com

Money Quotes: How Will You Measure Your Life (assembled by Symbolist)

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Was ist angesagt?

Was ist angesagt? (20)

Andere mochten auch

Andere mochten auch (18)

Ähnlich wie Money Quotes: How Will You Measure Your Life (assembled by Symbolist)

Ähnlich wie Money Quotes: How Will You Measure Your Life (assembled by Symbolist) (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

Money Quotes: How Will You Measure Your Life (assembled by Symbolist)