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Clay Christensen at TEDxBoston

TEDx video ... How Will You Measure Your Life? Clay Christensen at TEDxBoston

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

How Will You Measure Your Life? Clay Christensen at TEDxBoston TEDx Talks

Transcript English (Automatic Captions) 0:05huh 0:10well thank you very much 0:12come the world is 0:15in many ways organized in a nested system 0:19and so we have a nation's within those we have industries within industries we 0:25have corporations 0:26within those we have business units within those we has 0:31we have teams within the teams we have people 0:35and within our people we have brains 0:38and were nested it turns out that 0:42as I have and my colleagues have tried to 0:46understand how business works 0:50we've developed assertive theories 0:53it when I see a theory for me. news 0:56a statement of causality an understanding of what causes white 1:01imply and some love you 1:04know some of the theories disruption is a theory 1:08and let it asserts is that the mechanism that causes successful companies to fall 1:15is not that their not at their work 1:20but rather somebody comes in at the bottom of the market and moves up 1:25in its that's the mechanism the pursuit of profit from split the bottom in the 1:29market 1:30that makes success so hard to sustain 1:33there's another theory called to 1:36I'm theory love the preservation of modularity 1:41into that the theory of the 1:45preservation and modularity 1:48explains among other things why the euro 1:52doesn't work and why I'm 1:56SAP implementation systems 1:59I are sold our difficult 2:03in am complicated there's another theory called 2:08I'm jobs to be done 2:12and why did a search is that you know here's clay 2:16I have characteristics I'm unfortunately in 60 years old 2:21now I live in the suburbs three to five children 2:25I'm unfortunately have all left-winger who 2:29living independently into life has become boring 2:33but the fact that I A 2:37have those characteristics doesn't cause me 2:41to go out and buy the New York Times there might be a correlation between my 2:46characteristics and the propensity to buy 2:49the new york times but the characteristics don't cause me 2:53to do anything what causes us to do something is 2:57there's a job that arises in our life and we have to 3:01get the job done and what causes us to buy a product or services we have to 3:06reach out and find something that can do the job 3:09and Poland into our lives in that's the causal mechanism 3:14behind a purchase is understanding 3:17what's what's the job Indian site 3:20there is that their customers the wrong unit of analysis 3:23it's the job that we'd need understand so 3:27these are all of the reason some a few know those in 3:31in numbers others from our research what we have learned 3:36and inadvertently in many ways is that these statements have causality 3:42apply at every stage in this nested system 3:47and so the theories help us understand 3:50way missions I'm lose their competitiveness 3:54quietly Japan was sole successful 3:58and then died for example and fly 4:02America finds it so hard to read 4:05regain our momentum and tackles all the way down 4:09to the point if teams well and number two years ago in money 4:13course at the Harvard Business School in this course we study these theories 4:20try to understand them then put these theories on Mike assertive lenses and 4:25examine 4:25companies or economy sir nation or a 4:30industries and try to understand can we understand 4:34quiet things are happening the way they're happening 4:37important actions would you lead what results 4:41at the end of the course on the last day rather than asking them to 4:47just put on these lenses and examine yet another company 4:51I ask him to look in the mirror and ask them 4:56can you explain why your wife 5:00is the way it is today because of these theories 5:05and can you predict what will happen in your life 5:09if you continue to do what you are now doing 5:13and it's been a remarkable experience to see the students come back 5:17on the last skip day of class and with 5:21swith consul phiri's 5:24is the explanation with the need to change in their lives 5:28so that up their life will be though 5:31life that they heard hope to live retarded just after a couple with these 5:36in the hopes that as entrepreneurs 5:39and their I Inc and 5:43ambitious people you end up living the life that you hope 5:47you will live so one of the things we observed as I mentioned 5:52is that quick kill successful companies 5:56is somebody comes in at the bottom of the market 5:59so if you go back you a few years ago in telecommunications the darlings have the 6:04industry were loose intent 6:06and Nortel made circuit switching technology 6:10miss rusty littler small-company 6:14not very consequential called %uh Cisco 6:19emerged and their technology the router wasn't good enough to be used in voice 6:24but they deployed at the bottom of the market with data 6:28and then went up market and ultimately killed 6:31lucent Nortel and 6:35the reason why is that when they look down into router the router working on 6:39every dimension wasn't as good and so they kept making better get better and 6:44better 6:45password sweet Scopus circuit-switched 6:49devices and a we ask ourselves 6:53I wonder who decided at Lucent 6:56that they should go out and get killed 7:00and when was the date on which they decided they would get killed 7:04and the answer courses that nobody made the decision in fact what happened 7:09is all the individual people in a very successful organization 7:13did everything right but because they did all these things independently and 7:18what made sense 7:19in those circumstances when it summed up 7:23it summed up to disaster well 7:27the recent why it sums up to disaster 7:31is they're trying to I'm maximize their profitability 7:35and typically the way you calculate profitability 7:39tomorrow's investments that pay off tomorrow 7:43go to the bottom line and are much more tangible than investments that pay off 7:48ten years from now 7:49well when I go back to my 7:54graduating classes I graduated from the MBA program at Harvard 7:58im 1979 we have a 8:02reunion every five years when we came back for a fifth reunion 8:08man everybody was happy most 24 8:11classmates had married people who were much better-looking 8:15to my classmates they're doing well in their career 8:18but as we hit the 10th and 15th and 20th in the 25th anniversaries 8:24all my gosh my friends are coming back 8:27I'm not happy with their lives 8:30and very many of them had gotten divorced 8:34and their spouses had remarried and they were raising 8:37their chip my classmates children on the other side of the country 8:41alienated from a I guarantee 8:45did not have my classmates ever plant when he graduated from 8:49the business school to go out and get divorced and have children who hates 8:54hit their cuts rabin raised by other children 8:58and into various large portion a park my classmates actually implemented a 9:03strategy that 9:04they never planned to do and it turns out that 9:09the reason why they do that is the very same mechanism 9:12and that is that pursuit achievement 9:15so we all everybody here 9:19is driven to achieve and when you have 9:22in yeah extra counts have energy or 30 minutes have time 9:26instinctively and unconsciously your allocated to whatever activities in your 9:32life 9:33give you the most immediate evidence achievement 9:36and our careers provide that immediate evidence have achievement 9:41we close the sale we ship the product 9:44we finish a minute presentation we cruise close a deal we get 9:48promoted we get paid in our careers provide the most 9:54very tangible media achievement in contrast 9:59investments in our families don't pay off for a very long time 10:05contract on a day-to-day basis our children misbehave 10:09over and over again and it really good 10:12isn't until twenty years down the road that you can look at your children 10:16and be able to put your hands on your hips 10:19and say we did we race great children good on a day-to-day basis 10:24I'm achievement doesn't at hand 10:28when we invest in relationships with our family 10:31for children and their spouses and as a consequence people like you and I 10:37who plant to have a happy life because our families 10:41truly are the deeper source with happiness in our lives 10:46trying to tell although that's what we want the way we teach 10:49we invest our time and energy and talents 10:53causes us to implement a strategy that we 10:56wouldn't it all planned to pursue and so I wanted to just offer that one 11:02is something to think about I'm 11:06the reason for a successful companies fail 11:09is the invest in things that 11:12provide the most immediate and tangible evidence have achievement 11:16and the reason why they have such a short 11:19time horizon is that they are run by 11:23people like you and I and we then apply that they are very same 11:28I was thinking process in our personal lives 11:32with Sep results let me 11:36just offer another thought that might be 11:40useful I'm 11:43I was driving to work a number of years ago 11:46early and when I was on him 11:50a Huron Avenue in Cambridge 11:53I just had a feeling did 11:56something important was gonna happen to create christianson 12:00and I was gonna be given a much more consequential 12:05a business opportunity then I have just the supplying all professor 12:10and our a couple of weeks later 12:13somebody who was in that position announced that he was leaving 12:17and I put two and two together and decided 12:20gosh sounds like for whatever reason I just have this feeling 12:25that I'm gonna be his replacement 12:29so the day came and the choose chose another person 12:33and I I wondered why did I have that feeling 12:37the important thing was gonna happen to me 12:41to the people kinda who's got sirs 12:44I don't know but I have I wrestled with 12:49quite how movie measure Creek Christian since why 12:54you know if they're gonna not make me there to leaders 12:57a large respond institution 13:01how do I know whether my life has been worth living 13:04and again how will I measure my life 13:08and I realize that I studied this 13:12for a long time can I reach the strangest conclusion 13:17that God dozen employees at 13:21accountants or statisticians 13:24including mean by that is because you when I 13:29have finite mines 13:32when we try to understand what's going on in the world 13:36we have to aggregate thinks so in your company's you can't keep track of every 13:41individual invoice 13:44and so you have to aggregate although all those up 13:47so that you have receivables and payables and revenues in 13:51you can't keep track of every element of cost and so you have to aggregate all 13:55that up into 13:56total cost categories in the subtract that from this 14:01and there's a number and that's the way we 14:04we trade-up understand the world is because we have limited mines we have 14:10two 14:10aggregate things out and then look at that number compared to 14:14last year's number and if it's better than we say we're doing better 14:19and that's the way Wii U 14:22look at the world because so far but mines 14:25can it has them in another interesting effect on this and that is 14:30because we have to aggregate we get a sense serve 14:33hierarchy in the world in other words 14:37people who are higher up in 14:42larger organizations are more important 14:46than people who price who prefer preside over fewer numbers of people in fewer 14:51numbers 14:52down the road down the bottom and so we've 14:5510 do this so we get the sense that people who 14:58achieve in a hierarchical cents 15:02third their lives will be judged 15:05somehow was better would having lived 15:09those below and we measure sometimes how high we go or how successful we are by 15:15how much money 15:16we make but these are all the result 15:21arch are having limited mines and they're having to aggregate measures 15:26I've success 15:29I'm interest choice I've measurement 15:33is actually a big deal in a company 15:37for example if you measure profitability 15:42by return on net assets 15:46better ratio 10 sure you could be 15:49innovative develop successful new products 15:53and take that profitability and stick into the numerator 15:57over the ratio but you can also reduced the denominator earth ratio by 16:02outsourcing everything 16:04and the ratio doesn't matter with you build it from the top 16:08or subtract from the bottom if you if profitability 16:12is measured by return on net assets it causes us to manage it in a particular 16:17way 16:18and in a similar way if we follow our professors advices from finance 16:24and we measure profitability on on innovation in terms of 16:28internal rate of return are I R R 16:32it's a ratio and sure you can get the ratio 16:36bop by being successful with innovation 16:39but you could also could get that measure 16:42up by only investing in short term projects 16:47and it's just a long way of saying be careful 16:50in how you measure success 6 16:53have profitability in your company 16:57so heavier measure the profitable the 17:01successive your life in as I mentioned it's because 17:04we have to aggregate we have this sense of hierarchy 17:08wealth and so long but the reason I concluded that God doesn't 17:13up %uh employee accounts 17:17is he has an infinite mind and what that means he doesn't have to 17:21aggregate up above the level I've 17:24individual people in order to have 17:27a perfect understanding I've what's going on 17:3120 in this world and when we realized that 17:35that he doesn't have to aggregate up above the level 17:39I V individuals then I realized 17:43oh my goodness when I have my interview with guard at the end of my life 17:48he's not commit past two shots on me haha how high I went beyond anybody's 17:55org chart or how much money I left behind 17:59in the bank when he died a rather he's gonna say 18:03all clay I put you in that circumstance now can we talk about the individual 18:08people 18:10whose lives you help to become better people 18:13because you worked with him or they were in members of your family 18:17or you just met them and they needed your help 18:20and then clay I struck you you in this situation I was talking about 18:24the individual people whose lives she 18:27you blast because you use the talents I gave you 18:31to help them and I realize that that's the way God will measure my life 18:37is the individual people whose lives 18:40i blessed and I just want to offer that is the second 18:45take away from at least likely christiansen is thinking about 18:50and that is it's actually really important that you 18:53succeeded where your succeeding at but that isn't going to be the measure of 18:58your life 19:00God doesn't count he doesn't 19:03aggregate and a he's just gonna assess you 19:07on the basis serve how well you helped other people 19:11be better people will god bless you I hope that some of these ideas will be 19:15helpful to you 19:17and that you will speak successful in the way that God will measure 19:21success thank you Published on Jul 17, 2012 'It's actually really important that you succeed at what you're succeeding at, but that isn't going to be the measure of your life.' Too often, we measure success in life against the progress we make in our careers. But how can we ensure we're not straying from our values as humans along the way? Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School professor and world-renowned innovation guru, examines the daily decisions that define our lives and encourages all of us to think about what is truly important. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)