GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

How Will You Measure Your Life?, Clay Christensen, 2012

A business self help book that is unashamedly both. As a businessman, Christensen starts with incentives and culture.

He splits incentives into motivation and hygiene factors. Hygiene (fair pay, good team) are the basics that allows you to avoid disliking your job. Motivations are the warm fuzzies that turn your work into a passion.

He starts with corporate culture to discuss family culture. I generally despise the work = family equivalence, but he frames it well to present a fresh perspective on the matter. I need to ponder how incentive factors affect our family culture.

Following his thesis from the Innovator’s Dilemma, his key refrain is that the little things beneath our notice are what will determine our future.

The time and resources that you devote today, at this moment, prove your real priorities. Repeated execution of these priorities create your life.

His final chapter is a warning to stick to one’s standards. A small compromise in the moment may be a clever marginal play, but the full cost might be realized after one’s course has been steered in an ill direction.

I listened to it at 1.5x speed. It’s another classic pull yourself up by the bootstraps self help book, this time from a business consultant’s perspective. I haven’t felt the need to listen to it again, but I should watch his TEDx talk.