I hope those of you in the United States had a wonderful labor day weekend! A lot is happening in the journey of the book. In addition to revisions, I am revisiting the book title and started off with book cover design and illustrations for the inside of the book. For authors who choose a working title, like I did, it is common to change it once the book is formed. Here’s a link to my Ideas Brief document which captures my thinking and ideas from my Author Community. Let me know what you think, I would love to hear your suggestions and feedback!
The excerpt I want to share today is from Chapter 5. The Paradox of Goal Setting. In this chapter I share learnings from an article written by the late Clay Christensen, a Harvard Business School Professor. I knew him from the class on Disruptive Innovation which he taught, while I was on campus. This article sent me off on a personal search for a defined life purpose, something I had never thought of until then.
I was fortunate to meet Clay at many alumni events in the years that followed. The picture above was at one such event. Yes, he was incredibly tall!
Book Excerpt
In my experience and observations, there is a paradox in the process of goal setting, in both personal lives and business. A well-written goal is clear and measurable. And yet the moment we put a measurement on it, we limit it. As soon as we set a goal of 3x revenue growth in 3 years, we have limited the possibility to 3x (and not 10x). We have also ignored the many other factors that go into a well run business; employee and customer satisfaction, social responsibility and so on. In personal life, we focus on professional goals, such as making a million dollars by age 30. We tend not to include well being, good health and relationships. We take them for granted.
Most of our goals are narrow and rigid. This can lead to unexpected disappointments, both in personal life and business.
The Goals We Don’t Set
In 2010, the late Clay Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, wrote an article called ‘How Will You Measure Your Life’. In it, he bemoans that two of his Rhodes Scholar classmates spent time in jail, including Jeff Skilling of Enron fame*. He had made an interesting observation. His classmates, like all ambitious people, had set out clear goals for their professional lives. Many went on to achieve those goals and became rich and successful. None of them set out with a goal to commit white collar crime or end up with estranged families. And yet that is what Clay found happened with his classmates over and over again.
The problem was not in the goals they set for themselves, but rather the ones they didn’t. It didn’t occur to them to set goals on being in healthy relationships, or living ethical lives. This problem lies not just with individuals or young people, but is an all too common tendency in goal setting among all humans. We acquire this tendency toward narrow and rigid goals when we are young and then carry it to all aspects of our lives, parenting, planning a home purchase, even managing the teams and businesses we lead.
* Jeff Skilling was CEO of Enron, a large energy business. Once a successful CEO, he was convicted of federal felony charges in 2006, relating to Enron's collapse due to accounting fraud, and was eventually sentenced to 24 years in prison
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I was recently told by an Author Coach from my publisher’s team that many authors hate their book in the month or two after it comes out, due to sheer exhaustion and fatigue from the journey. Taking a page out of my book, I have expanded my book related goals to stay energized and not let that happen. This is not the hill I want to die on!
Cheers,
Jinny
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