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￥3.9【H114】你将如何衡量自己的人生？

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本文作者被誉为创新之父，同时他也是《创新者的窘境》的作者。

本文算是《你要如何衡量你的人生》这本书的精华版。对于人生迷茫但又不知道该如何破局的朋友来说，本文非常值得一读，因为他提供了一个完善的思考结构。

本文从三个人生问题切入：

如何找到让自己感到幸福的工作？

如何确保与伴侣和家人的关系成为生命中永恒的幸福之源？

如何避免走上违法犯罪的不归路？

作者就这三个问题给了五个答案：

制定你的人生战略、合理分配资源、构建自己的文化、避免边际成本错误、时刻保持谦逊、选择正确的人生衡量标准。

Editor’s note (2010): When the members of the class of 2010 entered business school, the economy was strong and their post-graduation ambitions could be limitless. Just a few weeks later, the economy went into a tailspin. They’ve spent the past two years recalibrating their worldview and their definition of success. The students seem highly aware of how the world has changed (as the sampling of views in this article shows). In the spring, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply them to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life. Though Christensen’s thinking comes from his deep religious faith, we believe that these are strategies anyone can use. And so we asked him to share them with the readers of HBR. 编者按（2010年）：当2010届的学生们步入商学院时，经济形势一片大好，眼前的世界似乎无限宽广，未来也充满了无限可能。然而，好景不长，仅仅几周后，经济就陷入了低谷。在过去的两年中，他们不得不重新调整自己的世界观和对成功的定义。那年春天，哈佛商学院的毕业生们邀请了克莱顿·克里斯坦森（Clay Christensen）教授为他们做演讲——但他们更感兴趣的是如何将在哈佛商学院学到的原则应用于个人生活，而非职业发展。克里斯坦森与他们分享了一套帮助他在自己生活中找到意义的指导原则。虽然这些原则植根于他的宗教信仰，但它们拥有普世的价值，我们相信任何人都可以从中受益。因此，我们邀请他将这些原则分享给《哈佛商业评论》的广大读者。

Before I published The Innovator’s Dilemma，I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, “Look, stuff has happened. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel.” I said that I couldn’t—that I needed a full 30 minutes to explain the model, because only with it as context would any comments about Intel make sense. Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: “Look, I’ve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.” 在《创新者的窘境》（The Innovator’s Dilemma）尚未出版之时，我接到了一个来自英特尔董事长安迪•格鲁夫（Andrew Grove）的电话。他对我早期关于颠覆性理论的研究津津乐道，并提出希望我能向他的团队详细讲讲这些观点及其对英特尔可能的影响。我满心欢喜地踏上了前往硅谷的旅程，却在到达后被告知：“我们只能抽出10分钟来听你分析。直接告诉我们，你的颠覆性理论对英特尔来说意味着什么吧。”我试图解释，这样的深度解析非三言两语所能概括，需要至少半小时才能把该理论的精髓讲清楚，否则任何针对英特尔的讨论都显得毫无意义。然而，讲解仅仅开始了十分钟，格鲁夫便打断我说：“行了，我懂你的理论了。现在只要告诉我，这对英特尔来说有什么价值？”

I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could understand how disruption worked. I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills.

那天，我坚持要求再给我十分钟的时间。我的目的是深入探讨一个例子，告诉大家在钢铁这样一个与众不同的领域里，“颠覆式创新”是如何一步步颠覆传统的。我希望通过这个故事，让他和他的团队能够深刻理解什么是真正的“颠覆”。故事讲的是纽柯钢铁厂（Nucor）和一些其他的小型钢铁厂，他们最初是如何从低端市场——也就是生产建筑用的钢筋入手，然后逐渐发展，最终挑战高端市场，并成为传统钢铁巨头的有力竞争者。

When I finished the minimill story, Grove said, “OK, I get it. What it means for Intel is…,” and then went on to articulate what would become the company’s strategy for going to the bottom of the market to launch the Celeron processor.

当我讲完了纽柯钢铁厂的故事，格鲁夫说：“好的，我明白了。这对英特尔意味着……”，然后他阐述了公司未来的策略——进军低端市场，推出赛扬处理器。

I’ve thought about that a million times since. If I had been suckered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the microprocessor business, I’d have been killed. But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own.

自那以后，我无数次地回想起这件事。如果我真的顺着安迪·格鲁夫的意愿，告诉他我对微处理器业务的看法，那结果无疑是自掘坟墓。但我选择了另一条路，我没有直接给出答案，而是教会了他如何去思考——然后他自己做出了我认为是正确的决定。

That experience had a profound influence on me. When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.

这段经历对我影响深远。从那以后，每当有人向我探询未来的方向时，我很少会直截了当地给出答案。我更倾向于将这个问题，在心中通过一系列模型进行演绎。我会讲述一个完全不同行业中，这些原理如何发挥作用，如何引领变革。通常，对方会恍然大悟，说一句“我明白了”。紧接着，他们往往能够提出比我还要深刻的答案，解答自己的疑惑。

My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone I attach different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions of a general manager’s job in stimulating innovation and growth. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.

在哈佛商学院，我开设的这门课程，旨在引导学生们深入探究何为卓越的管理理论及其构建之道。在课程的框架之上，我嵌入了一系列模型和理念，这不仅仅是为了装点门面。它们是为了启发学生们，从总经理的角度全面思考，如何在他们的工作中激发创新与促进增长。我们用一堂堂课程，将理论之光投射到各个公司身上，既解码它们如何走到今天的地步，又探讨哪些管理举措能引领企业走向期待的未来。

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction. 在课程收官之际，我提出了一次自我探索的挑战，引导学生们以理论为镜，审视自我，面对三个生命中的重要问题：

如何找到让自己感到幸福的工作？

如何确保与伴侣和家人的关系成为生命中永恒的幸福之源？

如何避免走上违法犯罪的不归路？

虽然最后一个问题似乎带着几分玩笑的色彩，却蕴含着深刻的警示。在我的罗德学者（Rhodes scholar）班级里，就有两位经历过牢狱之灾。曾与我在哈佛商学院共同学习的杰夫·斯基灵（Jeff Skilling），他的名字后来因安然公司的风波而家喻户晓。他们原本都是好人，但生命中总有那么些时刻，可能会让人误入歧途。

Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.

在商界达成一桩又一桩的交易，或许能带来短暂的快感，但那远不及培养人才带来的深层次成就感。

As the students discuss the answers to these questions, I open my own life to them as a case study of sorts, to illustrate how they can use the theories from our course to guide their life decisions.

在探讨这些人生课题时，我会毫无保留地将自己的经历分享给学生们，就像是一则活生生的案例分析。我的目的，是借此向他们展示，如何将我们课堂上学习到的理念和理论，应用到自己的人生选择和决策之中。

One of the theories that gives great insight on the first question—how to be sure we find happiness in our careers—is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements. I tell the students about a vision of sorts I had while I was running the company I founded before becoming an academic. In my mind’s eye I saw one of my managers leave for work one morning with a relatively strong level of self-esteem. Then I pictured her driving home to her family 10 hours later, feeling unappreciated, frustrated, underutilized, and demeaned. I imagined how profoundly her lowered self-esteem affected the way she interacted with her children. The vision in my mind then fast-forwarded to another day, when she drove home with greater self-esteem—feeling that she had learned a lot, been recognized for achieving valuable things, and played a significant role in the success of some important initiatives. I then imagined how positively that affected her as a spouse and a parent. My conclusion: Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team. More and more MBA students come to school thinking that a career in business means buying, selling, and investing in companies. That’s unfortunate. Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.

关于如何在职业道路上寻找幸福这一命题，弗雷德里克·赫兹伯格（Frederick Herzberg）的理论提供了独到的见解。他告诉我们：真正能够驱动我们生活的不是金钱，而是学习和成长的机会，以及帮助他人和获得成就的机会。我常常与学生分享我自己的经历，那是我在步入学术界、经营我自己创立的公司时的一次深刻反思。我脑海中经常想象这样一个画面：一位经理，早上出门工作时自信满满，但晚上回家时却感到自己不被重视、受挫、能力未得到充分发挥，甚至感到被贬低。我试图想象，这种心境的转变，会怎样影响她和家人的关系呢？然后，我的想象快进到另一天，她完成白天的工作以后自信地回到家——她觉得自己学到了很多，同事们也认可了她取得的进步，并且在一些重要项目的成功中扮演了关键角色。我想象这一切是如何积极影响她作为配偶和父母的角色的。因此，我深信，管理是一门伟大的艺术，只要运用得当。没有其他职业能像管理这样，提供丰富的机会去帮助他人成长、承担责任、获得认可并为团队的成功做出贡献。遗憾的是，越来越多的MBA学生误以为商业生涯仅仅围绕着买卖和投资。在商界达成一桩又一桩的交易，或许能带来短暂的快感，但那远不及培养人才带来的深层次成就感。

I want students to leave my classroom knowing that.

我希望学生在离开我的课堂时能明白这一点。

一、Create a Strategy for Your Life制定人生战略

A theory that is helpful in answering the second question—How can I ensure that my relationship with my family proves to be an enduring source of happiness?—concerns how strategy is defined and implemented. Its primary insight is that a company’s strategy is determined by the types of initiatives that management invests in. If a company’s resource allocation process is not managed masterfully, what emerges from it can be very different from what management intended. Because companies’ decision-making systems are designed to steer investments to initiatives that offer the most tangible and immediate returns, companies shortchange investments in initiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies.

有一个理论对于回答第二个问题非常有帮助——如何确保与伴侣和家人的关系成为生命中永恒的幸福之源？这一理论的核心观点是，一个公司的战略方向，实际上是由管理层选择投资的项目种类决定的。若公司在资源分配过程中缺乏高超的管理技巧，最终呈现的成果可能会与最初的期望截然不同。这是因为公司的决策系统倾向于优先考虑那些能够带来最直观、最即时回报的投资项目，从而忽视了那些对公司长远发展至关重要的领域。

Over the years I’ve watched the fates of my HBS classmates from 1979 unfold; I’ve seen more and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children. I can guarantee you that not a single one of them graduated with the deliberate strategy of getting divorced and raising children who would become estranged from them. And yet a shocking number of them implemented that strategy. The reason? They didn’t keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy.

岁月流转，目睹着1979年那一届哈佛商学院同窗们的人生轨迹，我发现越来越多的人在重逢时显得不再快乐，家庭破碎，与孩子们的关系也日渐疏远。我敢说，他们当初毕业时，没有人想过自己会变成这样。然而，实际上却有不少人不知不觉中走上了这条道路。为什么会这样呢？

究其原因，是因为他们在日复一日的生活选择中，忘记了将生命的真正目的作为行动的指南针，遗失了那份在时间、才华与精力投入上的初心与方向。

It’s quite startling that a significant fraction of the 900 students that HBS draws each year from the world’s best have given little thought to the purpose of their lives. I tell the students that HBS might be one of their last chances to reflect deeply on that question. If they think that they’ll have more time and energy to reflect later, they’re nuts, because life only gets more demanding: You take on a mortgage; you’re working 70 hours a week; you have a spouse and children. 有个事实可能让人震惊，那就是在哈佛商学院每年精挑细选的900名学霸中，不少人从未对人生的真正目标进行深思。我经常对这些学生说，商学院可能是你们深入思考此事的黄金时期。

如果你们自以为以后能腾出更多的空间来思考这些问题的话，那简直是异想天开，毕竟人生的车轮只会越滚越快：

房贷压顶，你一周要工作70小时，还有家庭和孩子需要操心，你哪来的闲暇思考人生呢？

For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I understood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra year’s worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.

在我的人生旅途中，确立一个明确的人生目标，对我来说是极其重要的一环。这个过程并非一帆风顺，而是经过长时间的沉思和探索才逐渐清晰。作为一名罗德学者，在牛津的日子里，我面临着极为严苛的学术要求，努力在有限的时间内完成比常规多一年的学习任务。即便如此，我还是决定每晚留出一个小时来阅读、沉思和祈祷，思考上帝为什么让我来到这个世界上。坚持这个决定并不容易，每当我沉浸在对生命意义的探求时，就意味着我无法投入到应用计量经济学的学习中。在学业和寻求生命目标之间，我曾感到十分矛盾。但我还是坚持了下来，并最终找到了自己的人生目标。

Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest techniques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It’s the single most useful thing I’ve ever learned. I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they’ll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered at HBS. If they don’t figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life. Clarity about their purpose will trump knowledge of activity-based costing, balanced scorecards, core competence, disruptive innovation, the four Ps, and the five forces.

如果我真的把那宝贵的每天一个小时用于学习计量经济学，那将成为我人生中的一大遗憾。事实上，我一年中只有几次会用到计量经济学的技术，而对生命意义的深刻理解却是我每天、每时每刻都在运用的知识。这也是我至今学到的最宝贵的财富。我常对我的学生们说，找到生命的意义，将是你们在哈佛商学院最伟大的发现。如果忽视了这一点，未来的人生很可能就会像失去舵的船只，随着波涛漂泊，方向不定。明白自己的人生目标，其意义远胜于精通各种商业和管理理论，如活动基础成本法、平衡记分卡、核心竞争力、颠覆性创新、市场营销的四P和行业分析的五力模型。在人生的航程中，这份清晰的自我认知，是你最坚实的舵。

My purpose grew out of my religious faith, but faith isn’t the only thing that gives people direction. For example, one of my former students decided that his purpose was to bring honesty and economic prosperity to his country and to raise children who were as capably committed to this cause, and to each other, as he was. His purpose is focused on family and others—as mine is.

虽然我的人生目标深植于我对宗教的虔诚之中，但寻找生命指引的路径远不止信仰一条。比如说，我的一位学生，他为自己定下了一个雄伟的目标——让他的国家更诚信、更繁荣，并培养出一群有能力、对这一使命同样承诺、并能彼此支持的后代。他的人生志向，就像我一样，既深扎于家庭的土壤，又波及更广阔的他人与社会。

The choice and successful pursuit of a profession is but one tool for achieving your purpose. But without a purpose, life can become hollow.

职业生涯的选择与执着追求，仅仅是达成人生目标的众多途径之一。但如果人生没有目标，那么生活就可能变得没有意义。就像一个空空的盒子，看起来完整，但里面什么也没有。

二、Allocate Your Resources分配资源

Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy. 我们每个人的生活就像是一家公司，我们的时间、精力和才华是有限的资源，如何分配这些资源，决定了我们人生策略的成败。【曹哲说：非常具有现实意义】

I have a bunch of “businesses” that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise great kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, contribute to my church, and so on. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time and energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?

在我的“企业”中，我试图做到多方面的平衡：和妻子维持一段充满爱与理解的关系、培养孩子们成为优秀的人、为社区贡献自己的力量、在职场上取得成功、在教会中发挥作用等等。就像面对企业经营的难题一样，我必须在有限的时间、精力与才能中做出选择，决定在每一个领域投入多少资源。

Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: Opportunities that you never planned for emerge. But if you misinvest your resources, the outcome can be bad. As I think about my former classmates who inadvertently invested for lives of hollow unhappiness, I can’t help believing that their troubles relate right back to a short-term perspective. 如何分配这些资源将决定我最终的生活状态。有时候，一些意外的好事会发生，这让生活更加精彩。但如果我没有好好规划，也可能会导致糟糕的结果。某些前同窗的生活轨迹给了我深刻的启示，他们的人生之所以最终充满了空虚和不快，很大程度上与他们过于注重短期利益、忽视长远规划有关。

When people who have a high need for achievement—and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates—have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

在那些对成就感渴望强烈的人中——而哈佛商学院的毕业生们无疑是其中的佼佼者——每当他们得到额外的半小时或是一点点能量时，几乎都会下意识地将其用于能快速看到成果的工作上。职业成就，如同明确的里程碑，每一个成功的项目、每一次晋升，都仿佛在告诉我们，我们正在正确的道路上不断前进。

与此形成鲜明对比的是，家庭生活中的投入往往不会立刻反馈给我们相同的成就感——孩子的成长和家庭的和谐需要长时间的耕耘和付出，而这种投入的成果往往需要数十年才能显现。

【曹哲说：这个Argument很惊人！】

因此，那些追求卓越的人很可能在无意中将过多的精力投入到事业上，而忽略了家庭——尽管温馨的家庭关系是支撑我们人生的最坚实的幸福之柱。

If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most. 深究商业失败的教训，我们不难发现一个反复出现的情景：那就是人们总是倾向于选择能够立即获得满足感的路径。这种倾向不仅仅局限于商业领域。当我们将这种观察应用于个人生活时，相同的模式再次出现。很多时候，人们会将资源和时间用在立即可以得到满足的事情上，而忽略了那些真正重要但需要长时间才能看到成效的事物。