How Will You Measure Your Life?

In 2012, Clay Christensen joined with James Alworth and Karen Dillon to write what I think of as one of the most important books out there called How Will You Measure Your Life. It was based on a the last class that he did at the Harvard Business School every single year. And in this conversation that you’re about to hear, Karen Dillon, Scott Anthony, another of Clay’s acolytes, and me got together and were interviewed by Victor Zhao and Martin Ekiti, co-presidents of the Parents@Harvard Chan School of Public Health to think about how we measure our lives and things that we take from that—to really make sure that we’re living in concert with purpose and the progress we seek to make and not drifting off course. I hope you enjoy the conversation that I’m bringing to you here that was recorded live on April 3rd.The Future of Education is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers receive unlimited access to My Delphi as well—helpful when I’m choosing family over “one more call”!VictorFirst, I’d like to quickly introduce ourselves and then just set up the backdrop for today’s conversation. Thank you everyone. My name is Victor. I’m one of the co leads of the Parents at Harvard Chan community which is the Parents club of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Along with my co moderator Martin we are really grateful to bring this conversation together. And this conversation is a part of the whole life Leadership speaker series, a Harvard affiliated series exploring one central question. What are the pivotal mindsets, habits and tools needed to succeed both at work and at home? At its core, the series is built on a simple belief that leadership is not compartmentalized.Honoring Clayton Christensen’s legacyVictorHow we show at work and how we set up at home are deeply connected. And today leaders we have a very special session. We are gathering to honor the legacy of Professor Clayton Christensen, whose work reshaped how the work understands innovation, but who also challenged us to think more deeply about something even more important, which is how we measure our lives. In his well known framework, Clay encouraged us to think about three key questions. How do we find meaning in our careers? How do we build enduring relationships? And how we live lives of integrity. And today we’re honored to be joined by three remarkable individuals, thinkers and leaders who have engaged deeply with Clay’s work and ideas and they will help us explore how these principles apply in real life. First, we have Scott Anthony. Scott is a Clinical professor of Strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and previously spent over two decades at Innosight, the forum co-founded by Clay Christensen, where he served as a global managing partner.He’s a leading thinker on innovation and disruption, a Thinkers50 award winner and author of several influential books including Dual Transformation and the most recently, Epic Disruptions. Scott brings both deep intellectual and practical perspectives on how Clay’s idea have evolved and been applied over time. Next we have Karen Dillon. Karen is a co author of How Will You Measure Your Life based on Clay’s work and teaching and served as the editor of Harvard Business Review. She worked closely with Clay for over a decade and has been instrumental in translating his ideas into guidance for individuals navigating life leadership and well being. Her current work focuses on helping people understand how everyday decisions shape long term outcomes, including her recent book the Macro Stress Effect. And finally, we have Michael Horn. Michael is a co-founder of the Clay Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation and a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.He is a widely recognized author and thought leader in education and career development, including his recent new book, Job Moves. Michael’s work focuses on helping individuals build lives of meaning and fulfillment. He closely aligned with questions Clay challenged us to consider. And with that, we are very excited for you all to be here. Let’s dive into the conversation and Martin will open our conversation up with a question for all our panelists.MartinThank you so much, Victor, for passing the baton to me. Well, I am personally very excited to be part of this conversation. We’re going to talk about a few things over the next few minutes. I know we had some technical issues in the beginning, but we’re going to divide the talk into different sections over the next, I don’t know, 40 minutes and then have some time at the end for Q and A. But before we go into some of the specific sections, I just want to ask all t