Five Big Life Decisions

Recently I attended my 30th business school reunion. I always enjoy reconnecting with friends from those days and catching up on each other’s lives. As part of the weekend programming, the school offers a number of classroom sessions, most presented by faculty but some from alumni as well. They are consistently well-done and thought-provoking.

One of the sessions continues to stick with me following the weekend. It featured a classmate, Tori Hackett , and a 1992 graduate, Fred Singer, presenting outputs from a study of 40 graduates from the Class of 1992 over a 30 year period. All were brave enough to answers dozens of questions on video, starting shortly before their graduation, about what they expected from their professional and personal lives. I can only imagine (and shudder at) what I would have said at that age.

Hackett and Singer went on to check in with their 40 research subjects at five year intervals up to the point of their 30th reunion in 2022. The results became a documentary they called Five Big Life Decisions.

So what were the five decisions?

1. The Career Exploration Phase: Matching Talents / Passions With Opportunities
2. Long-Term Relationship Choices
3. The Disruptive Decision To Have Children (Or Not)
4. The Value Choice Tradeoffs Between Work, Family, Pleasure, and Health
5. The Recalibration Decision: Reassessing Your Late Career and Life Priorities

The group included some incredibly accomplished people, many of whom went on to be C-level executives, government officials, entrepreneurs, and non-profit leaders. Some, when interviewed at graduation, expressed unabashed ambition. For others, the seeds of their desire to “do good” at some point in their careers were evident even before they left school. And they all went off into that career exploration phase.

Along the way, life happened. Some learned the hard way that who you pick as your life partner will impact your career outcomes. One couple (both featured in the research) ended up marrying. She wanted a full-focus career, while he wanted hers to take a back seat to his. Ultimately, she reached her recalibration point and decided to divorce him, so that she could put her full self into her own career.

Others wrestled with decisions on whether to have children, some waiting until quite late, only to be still managing teenagers at home while their peers were already grandparents. And some were going full throttle only to suddenly find themselves single parents and having to downshift dramatically.

Unsurprisingly, a number of the group were derailed along the way – by recessions, medical issues, accidents, family matters and other setbacks. These events altered their journeys and trajectories.

So what were the takeaways at the end of this 30-year study?

1. Those with a clear North Star / identity had better filters for decision-making and achieved greater success and happiness
2. Being able to distinguish between Core Values and Other Values was critical to outperformance, happiness, and living with the toughest choices
3. Successful and happy people had a superior formula for managing risk, failure, and stress in a chaotic world
4. There is no perfect life. Success was sometimes easier to achieve than happiness. What success looked like on the outside was not always what success felt like on the inside

Ultimately Hackett and Singer discussed a Toolkit for Outperformance, one aimed at helping you align your life arc. Expressed as a formula, Outperformance = Inside-Out Alignment, and the toolkit for creating that alignment includes Identity, Values, Strengths, Mindset, Habits, and Relationships. A somewhat crooked screenshot is below.

No matter where you are in your career, there are lessons that you can take away from this study. Are you clear on your North Star? On your most important values? Do you have a growth mindset and a willingness to face challenges without losing hope? If not, consider what steps you want to take to strengthen your inside-out alignment. Doing so will help you both professionally and personally.

JR and the PathWise team

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Recent and Upcoming Podcasts

September 30, Lessons From Three Tech CEO Gigs, with Mike Tuchen.?Mike is a recently retired tech sector veteran, having spent time at Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Rapid 7, Talend, and Onfido, the last three of which were CEO roles. He talks about his journey and his current plans to give back to his local community in our discussion

October 7, Innovation, Disruption, Transformation, and Leadership, with Scott Anthony.?Scott is a clinical professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, the author of multiple books, and the previous managing partner at Innosight, Clayton Christensen’s consulting firm. Thinkers50 named him the world’s ninth most influential thinker in 2023 and the world’s leading innovative thinker in 2017. We’ll cover a range of topics related to Scott’s pioneering work.

As always, our “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts are available on all the major podcast platforms, with video versions on PathWise’s YouTube channel

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Career Themes

September 30 – Diversity.?Diversity encompasses a wide range of characteristics. Yes, it’s about race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, education, and national origin. However, it’s also about differences in strengths, interests, motivators, and thought processes. By fostering diversity, you'll improve outcomes. We’ll share some tips for doing that.?

October 7 – Empowerment. If you’re a manager, you need to empower your team. Empowerment fuels engagement, and engagement fuels results. And if you’re a team member, you want that empowerment as well, as it will greatly increase your job satisfaction. We’ll talk about how to create an environment of empowerment.?

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October Book Summary

Smart Choices,?by John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa, presented by PathWise’s Daniela De Luca?We all make countless decisions every day, some consciously and many sub-consciously. For the choices that matter, though, it’s imperative that we make them well. But few of us have been formally trained in decision-making. We’ll cover the process recommended in?Smart Choicesin this month’s book summary.?

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