The Ultimate Question

James A. Cusumano

Chairman & Owner--Chateau Mcely, Prague

It’s often called the Ultimate Question. We all want long-term personal fulfillment in both our personal and professional lives. And in doing so, we come face-to-face with this question, a question that has confronted humanity since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, a question each of us must answer. But first, a very telling story that addresses the issue.

           A bright, young executive had made it to a top position at a leading technology company. Shortly before his 35th birthday, he found himself suffering from overwork, stress, and exhaustion, so he decided to take a holiday in a remote seaside village on the island of Sicily. One afternoon as he basked in the warmth of the Sicilian sun while walking along the tranquil turquoise Mediterranean, he suddenly found himself in casual conversation with a fisherman.

           He asked the fisherman about his life in this remote village. “Well,” said the fisherman in broken English, “I sleep late. Then I take my boat out just after lunch and catch enough fish to feed my family and a bit more to sell in the marketplace so that I have money to buy a few bottles of wine, bread, and some vegetables. After diner with my family, I join my friends at the local café and we drink, laugh and talk until the early morning hours. Then I go home, sleep late the next morning and start all over again.

           The recovering executive was intrigued. â€œWhy don’t you get up earlier, take your boat out before dawn, and catch even more fish to sell?” â€œWhy would I want to do that?” was the fisherman’s response. â€œBecause with all that extra money you could save up and buy another boat, hire another fisherman and catch even more fish!”

           â€œSo, then what would I do?” “Well,” said the executive as he became increasingly animated, “with all that extra money you could continue to buy more boats, recruit more helpers, and before long you’d have your own fishing fleet!” â€œReally? What then?” responded the puzzled fisherman.

           â€œThen you’d have a nice balance sheet that you could take to an investment group and finance the purchase of other fleets here in the Mediterranean. Why, you could take your company public on the New York Stock Exchange. You could build a global fishing empire and then diversify into related business sectors.” And finally, with intense crescendo, the executive exclaimed, “You could become a Fortune 500 company, and even have your picture on the cover of Forbes Magazine!”

           Now, thoroughly puzzled, the fisherman queried, “What then?”

“What then? Are you kidding me? I’ll tell you what then—you’d be very wealthy. You could live the life of your dreams, with no more stress and worry. You could settle in a little village, sleep late in the morning, maybe take your boat out to do some fishing and spend evenings with your friends at the local café—that’s what!”

           I first heard this story years ago from an executive coach and recently read it in a book by physicist and philosopher, Jim Baggott.[i] Baggott suggests, “This story highlights the absurdity of some aspects of our modern consumer culture. We struggle to make our way through the reality of our complex social existence, striving to earn enough money to buy things we don’t need, pay off the mortgage, pay bills, the school fees, the expensive holidays, and so achieve our world of imagination, our dream of a simpler existence. In our complex lives, simplicity is bought only at a high price, it seems.” Personally, I see no problem with pursuing the “good life” if it is done with BALANCE and with an accurate answer to the Ultimate Question.

           So, here’s the question, “What do I do with my life?”  For most of us, the objective of our answer is long-term personal fulfillment. I have found in my life and in my study of the lives of other executives, both successful and not, that the key to long-term fulfillment is balance between your personal and professional lives. Both spheres are important. 

By fulfillment, I mean a state of mind characterized by feelings of contentment, joy, and satisfaction. It certainly is not a state that you can sustain without occasional interruptions and spikes of uncertainty and disappointment. Challenges happen. But as you look back over weeks, months and certainly over the years, you want to be able to say as Mr. Sinatra sang, “I did it my way,” and in doing so, it made an important difference in your life and in the lives of others.

           Eleanor Roosevelt often advised that “Happiness is not a goal; it’s a byproduct.”[ii] You must do something to achieve it, and that something is finding and following your Life Purpose within the scope of those values you set for yourself. Anything else is a waste of a good life and talent. 

Unfortunately, the numbers don’t suggest that most of us find long-term fulfillment. Leading corporate strategist, Gary Hamel and the results of several Gallop polls show that only 20 percent of people in the developed world are engaged and fulfilled in their jobs.[iii] People in the other 80 percent, fall in a range between just collecting a paycheck, to outright distaste for their job and their employer. It’s not that they are not talented; they almost inevitably are, but not at the job they are currently doing. 

Early on, most of us have an inkling of our Life Purpose. As the King of Salem counseled young Santiago in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, “You have succeeded in discovering your Personal Legend [Life Purpose] . . . It’s what you have always wanted to accomplish . . . Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is.” Perhaps misguided early in life by well-intentioned counsel, people in that 80 percent category were dissuaded from engaging with their Life Purpose and encouraged to pursue a profession or skill that their advisors considered a successful career. Successful here means a career that would result in a high salary and a position of prestige. And now they find themselves stuck in a job they don’t like.

           It is never too late to change careers and find, pursue and nourish your Life Purpose, no matter how frightened you are of doing so. Consider just one commercial sector—restaurants. The late multibillionaire Ray Kroc, son of modest Czech immigrants, grew up in Chicago and tried all kinds of jobs, including jazz band pianist, waiter, and traveling salesman. He was fifty-two years old when he finally discovered his Life Purpose and founded the global McDonald’s franchise. His competitor, Harland “Colonel” Sanders lived a very modest life for more than six decades. A citizen of the south, his life-long passion was developing the most delicious fried chicken recipe. He was sixty-five years old when he launched the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain.

I certainly am not pushing fast food, nor am I judging Kroc’s or Sanders’ values. The message here is don’t waste your time trying to live another person’s dream—no matter whose dream it is—it can’t be done. That course almost always leads to disappointment and an also-ran life. In my book, BALANCE: The Business-Life Connection I address how to determine or rediscover your Life Purpose and how to nourish and follow it. But even this cannot lead to long-lasting fulfillment and happiness without BALANCE.

           What do I mean by BALANCE? It is the ability to readily exercise optimal effort in both your personal and professional lives to achieve a desirable return in both spheres. Optimal means being efficient, i.e., doing things right, and being effective, i.e., doing the right things. Desirable return is achieving those goals that you set for yourself in both spheres of your life. For this to work, you must create a Values-Based Life Plan. In this chaotic world, it is next to impossible for you to achieve BALANCE without such a plan. The reason that many people do not believe balance is possible in their life is that they have never experienced the power of a Values-Based Life Plan.

           To create your plan, you first identify your fundamental values in each of the six areas of your life. These values must be what you hold sacred in each area, not what someone else or even you think they should be, but what you feel deep down in your heart and soul. Coming to grips with this process is a challenging and interesting undertaking. The six areas are profession, finance, relationships, spirituality, health, and knowledge. 

Using these values, you can then create goals and actions that are meaningful as well as a time-management tool to be sure that your goals are achievable in the time period you set for yourself. The final product is a three-year rolling plan, and it does take some time to develop it the first time around. However, updating it annually is straight forward. This process is not only a means to a fulfilled and happy life, but it also enables you to develop Inspired Leadership skills that can help you play an important role in building a successful enterprise by inspiring others to follow a similar path.

It beats finding yourself in that 80 percent segment of the unhappily employed! And as for the required effort, as a great philosopher once noted, “It takes more work to live an unhappy life than it does a happy one, so why not choose a happy life?”   

Enjoy your journey—make a difference!

Jim Cusumano

www.JimCusumano.Com

References

[i] Jim Baggott, A Beginner’s Guide to Reality, Penguin Books, New York, 2005, Kindle version, location 359.

[ii] Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 1960, p.95.

[iii] Gary Hamel, Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0, “Management’s Dirty Little Secret,” Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2009. Also see https://www.gallup.com/poll/150383/majority-american-workers-not-engaged-jobs.aspx.