Page Turners

Page Turners club does book review of a book chosen by the club and shared with the members and book lovers. 

Book Review: HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE?

Details of the Book chosen for Review

Title:HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE?
Sub-title: Finding Fulfillment Using Lessons From Some of the World’s Greatest Businesses
Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth and Karen Dillon
City of Publication: London
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Year of Publication: 2012
Number of Pages: 221
Price: 9.99 Pounds (in the UK), 399 Rupees (in India)

About the Authors
The principal author of the book is Clayton M. Christensen, who is a world-renowned innovation expert and a professor at Harvard Business School. His theories have been responsible for the successes of many organizations in a wide range of industries. In 2011 in a poll of thousands of executives, consultants and business school professors, Christensen was named as the most influential business thinker in the world. James Allworth was one of Christensen’s students at Harvard (of the MBA Batch of 2010) and a member of the class where Christensen delivered the lecture which in turn led to this book. Until she began working on this book, Karen Dillon was for long the Editor of Harvard Business Review, arguably the most influential management magazine in the world. She has been managing people since very early in her career, which has led to her particular interest in the topics of leadership and managing and developing people — as well as managing oneself.

The Genesis of the Book
The book has for its origin a powerful speech delivered by Christensen to the graduating MBA class of 2010 of Harvard Business School wherein, drawing upon his own business research, he offered a series of guidelines for finding meaning and happiness in life. These guidelines emerged from his distinctive quest as a business researcher and professor to understand what causes companies to be successful and why. Over the years, he – along with his students – has been applying the theories that this quest yielded to study not only companies, but individuals as well. This application of business theories to the lives of individuals turned out to be very illuminating and insightful indeed.

The speech, based on these insights, was found by the students to be deeply revealing and moving. It also became a viral hit on the World Wide Web. Such overwhelming and widespread acclaim led Christensen to the conclusion that it would be eminently worthwhile to develop these ideas into a book – and this is what we have as a result.

The What and the Why of the Book
As outlined above, the book is based on theories of causality – what causes things to happen and why – and not just on correlation. The theories which have been found to hold good in the world of business have been applied to the larger question of life to yield very powerful, thought-provoking and transformational insights.

Specifically, the book puts forth a series of three very vital questions: How can I be sure that I’ll find satisfaction in my career? How can I be sure that my personal relationships become enduring sources of happiness? How can I avoid compromising my integrity and stay out of jail? It then applies different theories of business to provide incredible insights into these challenging questions.

Rather than being prescriptive, the book encourages the reader to chart his own path by teaching him how to think – about his life and his purpose. The theories summarized in the book serve as guideposts to the future, helping the reader understand the critical
decisions that can bring him happiness and success in life – as opposed to sadness and disappointment.

By doing this, the authors seek to help and impel the reader to first of all pose to oneself and thereafter find an answer to one of the most important questions each one of us needs to ask ourselves and answer: How will you measure your life?

Gist of the Book
The book begins by recounting that many people who were well-rounded and highly accomplished have also fallen into disgrace and failed spectacularly in their personal lives – including divorces and being put in jail. It then introduces the value of theories of causality in business and their potential in helping us making decisions and actions that can guide and help us to achieve the objectives inherent in the three vital questions above. The authors tell us that robust and tested theories of causality are far more powerful than past experiences as a tool for decision making, especially given that the wealth of past experiences does not per se tell us what to accept and what to reject.

The remainder of the book is divided into three sections – one section for each of the three questions above.

The first section begins by noting that one should have a strategy for one’s career – one that will help one find satisfaction in it. The authors explain that a strategy has three elements – priorities, balancing plans with opportunities and resource allocation. It then uses theories of motivation to highlight what truly motivates people and thus exhorts us to look inward, understand what would make us truly happy and then to make career decisions based upon these new metrics. A core takeaway is that we find happiness in career when we focus on intangibles like personal growth, meaning and recognition (the motivators) rather on tangibles like money and status (the hygiene factors). But getting our priorities right is only half the battle. The book then goes on to explain how to balance plans with unanticipated problems and opportunities – how to balance deliberate and emergent strategy. The authors say that if one has already found a career option that provides one with both the motivators and the hygiene factors adequately, then a deliberate strategy makes sense; an emergent strategy should be adopted otherwise wherein one has a plan but is at the same time open to and adapting according to emergent problems and opportunities. Further, the authors advise us that before taking up a job or making any important career decision, we would do well to adopt the method of discovery-driven planning. This entails listing out the assumptions that have to hold good and work out to be true in order for our plan to succeed and then testing those assumptions. The authors assure us that if we are honest with the above process, we can be confident of finding fulfillment in our careers.

The next section begins by making the stark observation that most high-achievers tend to over-invest in their careers and under-invest in their relationships, as the former investment yields more immediate evidences of its success while the latter takes much longer to produce results. The authors also remind us that our careers are only a proper subset of our lives and that the joy one can derive from one’s intimate relationships with one’s family and close friends trumps by a long shot the happiness that our careers offer us. Accordingly, this section of the book explores how we may nourish these relationships and also ensure that we do not damage them. The authors use the theory of good money and bad money to highlight that relationships with family and close friends need constant attention and care, especially when they seem to be going well and that one has to invest for the long term. Next, the authors advise us that we approach our relationships from the perspective of the ‘job-to-be-done’; this approach demands us to ask what our ‘job’ is (what we need to do for the other) with respect to each of the roles we assume in life. This would enable us to develop true empathy. Having developed this, we should then devote the time and energy necessary to suppress our self and work for the other. The authors say that sacrificing ourselves in the process deepens the commitment in our relationships. Coming to raising children, they employ the Resources, Processes and Priorities model to point out that parents need to provide their wards with challenges, opportunities to solve hard problems and thereby develop values that shall equip them to negotiate the journey of life confidently. They also caution that parents should not commit the grave mistake of ‘outsourcing’ to other people the job of providing
these experiences to their children. The authors then go on to say that it is more important for parents to focus on giving their children the right experiences or in other words let them take the right courses in the school of experience than on building their children’s resumes. They also talk about the importance of culture, which sets the rules on how to behave in diverse circumstances based upon a common and shared set of priorities. They say that culture needs to be deliberately set by parents from very early on.

In the final section, the authors address the last question. Here, the authors explain the trap of marginal thinking and assert that 100% of the time is easier than 98% of the time. Hence, they say that the only way to avoid making uncomfortable moral concessions in our life is to never make them in the first place.

The book concludes by providing a process to discover and develop one’s purpose in life. The authors say that a purpose has three components: likeness (of the person we want to become), commitment and metrics. They say that the person one wants to become should be carefully decided by each individual and that the journey of attaining that goal needs to be a planned one, requiring a lot of commitment. One should also continually measure one’s progress in the journey by deciding and thereafter employing the right metrics based upon which our progress is to be measured. The authors leave us with the comforting and at once challenging thought that if we take the time to figure out our purpose in life, we would look back on it as the most important thing we would have ever
learned.

Critical Appraisal
In my humble and considered opinion, the authors have written a singularly wonderful, distinctively different, eminently lucid and potentially life-changing book. I would highly recommend and strongly urge everyone to read it and thus bear the fruits of the effort.

The book takes a refreshingly fresh approach to answering some of the very fundamental questions of life. In fact, by basing their analysis on theories rather than on correlations, the authors are taking a genuinely philosophical approach to life. The theories of business which have been applied to our personal lives have been explained in a very intelligible manner with the help of cases of organizations. By thus providing immense clarity on what the theories are, the reader is able to understand their application to life and relationships with remarkable ease.

The conclusions arrived in the book are eminently credible by virtue of the firm grounding in strong research foundations which they enjoy. The narration is also very reader friendly – in a very lucid and empathetic style, employing simple language and eschewing needless jargon.

The book is extremely relevant and promises a life-changing experience for every adult. The most appealing feature of the book is that it does not teach us what to think but how to think – and about some of the most important and critical questions of life.

If one is patient enough to reflect and work with the book diligently, one can be assured of a transformational experience.

In closing, the reviewer would like to confess that he does not find anything wanting in the book and that he hence gives it a superlative rating!

– Reviewed by Dheep Joy Mampilly

Email: dheep.mampilly@iiml.org

Book Review:2

Tracing the Turbulence of Return: Reading Mohsin Hamid’s

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

 

 

The Greek word for return is nostos. Algos means “suffering.” So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

– Milan Kundera,

 Ignorance

 

The idea of “returning home” has been a profound and pervasive trope in narratives across cultures. The expression of this archetypal theme of journey-home assumes many colours and credos in scriptures, myths, epics, and folk narratives. Ruminating intensely on the chaos of displacement – at times the pleasures of it – these narratives capture the dynamic entwining of physical “place” and mental “space.” Edward Said reminds us that “exile, immigration and the crossing of boundaries are experiences that can . . . provide us with new narrative forms” In John Berger’s words, journey-home equips us “with other ways of storytelling.” Thus the ideas of displacement from home and those of “return” kindle the sensibilities of many a writer and forms an invasive idiom for creative expression.

The postcolonial and post-globalized world has facilitated both displacement and return through migratory movements across cultural, social and political plateaus. Migration forms the sieve through which memories are filtered, narrated and re-narrated from the confines of “imaginary homelands.” Published in 2007, Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist (now being adapted into a movie) evocatively captures the turbulent trails of migrant experience. The book traces the journey of Changez, a bright and successful Pakistani man living in the Unites States, and the dramatic changes he is forced to accept following the events of 9/11; it tells how he is forced to return to Pakistan to answer the “pull of his true personal identity.”

Written like a dramatic monologue, the novel unfolds the experience of Changez in America as a student at Princeton University and as an employee at Underwood Samson, a publishing company in New York. In the novel, Changez is the sole narrator who recounts his story to an unnamed American in the streets of Lahore. Changez confides to the American how, despite his success, he experienced doubts about his role in America and about America’s role in the world. Through Changez’ descriptions, the novel puts forward the grim picture of post 9/11America.

    

He experiences discrimination in airports, in the workplace and in the streets. “More than once, travelling on the subway – where [he] had always had the feeling of seamlessly blending in – [ he] was subjected to verbal abuse by complete strangers . . . whispers and stares” (130). He begins to increasingly feel the hostility of his workmates and fear of attack: “Pakistani cabdrivers were being beaten … the FBI was raiding mosques, shops, and even people’s houses” (107).

            Slowly but steadily Changez realizes American society’s growing indifference towards the Muslims; in his adopted homeland he finds himself as an unwelcome guest, an intruder. And he returns to his homeland permanently, leaving behind the memories of his days in America. But his return is to a Pakistan where “salaries have not risen in line with inflation, the rupee has declined steadily against the dollar, and those who once had substantial family estates have seen them divided and subdivided by each-larger-subsequent generation” (6). Confronted with this reality, Changez manages to join the university in Lahore as a lecturer and evolves as an activist against American foreign policy of “war on terror.” Thus the trouble-ridden paths towards and from America shape the rebellious predicament of Changez and infuses him with the pleasures of homecoming.

                 However, it is to be noted that Changez’ return-home is permeated by ambivalence, atrophy and algos. As his the return path becomes a productive space in which clash and dialogue between “the old and the new” take place, he undergoes the trauma of return along with the sweet nostalgia of homecoming.

            The Reluctant Fundamentalist revolves around the central axiom of personal selves permeated by political prejudices and permutations. As a“narrative of return” it creates a discourse on transformed spaces and the transformation of temperaments. As a riveting tale that clearly documents the trials and tribulations of return-home, Hamid’s book also carves out tapestries of fathers and sons, servants, best friends, love, family, loyalty, betrayal, war, fundamentalism, discrimination, reconciliation, and redemption. Through the agonizing journeys and sojourns – physical and psychological – the narrative eloquently enunciates the intersections of homecoming, return and expatriation; they form testaments of the turbulence of  nostos and algos.