Week 3 - "How Will You Measure Your Life?"

In this weeks reading there was an article entitled "How Will You Measure Your Life" by Clayton M. Christensen a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University (also from a book authored by him). The article had several examples that a person could use as an example or motivation in regard to giving their life credibility and an outline of successes, but there was one particular story that stuck out to me and me really think for a moment. It is entitled "Avoid the Marginal Costs of Mistake", He shares a story of playing for the Oxford University basketball team and that they worked so hard through the entire season to be undefeated and made it to what would be the equivalent of the NCAA tournament. They found out the game was going to be on a Sunday and he had to explain to his team mates that he was not going to be able to play on Sunday, his team mate begged him asking if couldn't "just once" make this exception? He stuck with his principles and explained that he had made the decision to not play sports on Sunday when he was sixteen and that he was not going to break that promise he had made. His comments in the end of the story that go with the sections title:

"The Lesson I learned from this is that it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time." If you give in to "just this once", based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you'll regret where you end up. You've got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place."

That story and his thoughts have made me identify more in the business world that sticking to a set of rules and principles is very important. As he put it drawing the line in a safe place, if we make exception after exception we lose continuity, balance, the ability to track progression really, because if something is never the same price, time allotment, or plan a person can get lost in knowing there next best plan of attack. Something I will continue to implement in my career in business and I think the story is one that will stick with me as well. If you are interested in reading the story you might try looking at http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1 to read the full section.

I don't know if Calvin would of had the same motivation to stick to his principles, or for that matter play the game sportsmanlike or by the rules.