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Building a Life — Howard H. Stevenson

successlife-designmeaningcareerlegacyhappiness

Building a Life — Howard H. Stevenson

Harvard Business School talk (2013) by Howard-Stevenson, Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration Emeritus. Delivered after Stevenson survived sudden cardiac arrest in 2009 — 1% survival odds — which prompted him and research partner Laura Nash to interview ~150 high achievers about what success actually means. The results became the book Howard's Gift (2013).

The talk's central argument: most people pursue success as if it were one-dimensional, sequential, and defined by someone else's path. All three assumptions are wrong — and following them produces a life that looks right from the outside and feels hollow on the inside.

What Do You Mean by Success

Stevenson opens with the observation that defines the whole talk: success is hard to define, hard to measure, often uneven, and tends to be both rational and emotional at once. It is a state of being, not a destination — "as soon as you say I'm successful, you probably start to fail."

Several bad success models: Herodotus's "count no man successful till he dies" (tried it; didn't work). The velvet-lined rut — getting very good at what you're naturally strong at until the world changes and the path dead-ends. "Follow your passion" — which ignores whether the passion has a market; many children end up on deep subsidy at 50, stranded when the subsidy stops. "Having it all" at once (Dr. Ruth and Donald Trump in the same 24 hours).

The problem with all of them: they seek one activity to satisfy all needs. One activity rarely has it all.

The Four Dimensions of Success

Stevenson and Nash discovered that their 150 interviewees' stories clustered into four distinct types of success. See four-dimensions-of-success.

The crucial finding: the four dimensions are uncorrelated. Getting one does not get you the others:

  • Marilyn Monroe and Ernest Hemingway demonstrated achievement without happiness.
  • His grandfather — assistant postmaster, Silver Beaver Scout — was deeply significant without notable achievement.
  • Aspen trustafarians demonstrate happiness without achievement.
  • Karl Marx left enormous legacy while being mean, abusive, and by most accounts unhappy.

Each dimension also has a positive and a dark emotional twin. Achievement can be driven by mastery and pride, or by envy, greed, and fear. Significance by fairness and generosity, or by power and self-aggrandizement. Legacy by altruism, or by fear of death and need for control.

The Three Great Fears

Most HBS graduates operate under three implicit fears:

  1. I won't be successful.
  2. I will be successful — but it won't be enough (the Peggy Lee problem: "Is that all there is?")
  3. I will be successful — but I'll have to sell my soul.

The third is the one most people carry longest: the belief that worldly success requires giving up something essential.

The Sequential Fallacy and the Spiral Model

The natural instinct: do one thing at a time. Achieve first, then find significance, then be happy, leave legacy when you die. Multiple books sell this model.

It doesn't work. See the sequential fallacy section within four-dimensions-of-success.

The people in Stevenson's research did something different: they started practicing all four dimensions from very early on — small achievements, small significance, small legacies from high school and early career — and the stories grew in a spiral, each loop bigger than the last.

Success as Juggling

Rather than "balance" (a seal holding a ball on its nose, static), Stevenson argues for juggling. See success-as-juggling.

The key rule: you have to keep your eye on all the balls. The most important ball is the falling one — not the one at the top, not the one in your hand. Some balls are rubber (careers bounce); some are glass (family can shatter).

The Sense of Enough

The third surprise in the research: the role of defining "enough." See sense-of-enough.

Without a sense of enough on each dimension, you can always add one more (there is no largest integer). The maximization trap: the more you produce in one dimension, the less you can produce in others, because you only have 24 hours. Enough enables the juggle.

Regret vs. Wince

Regrets come from kidding yourself — not from bad outcomes. "Don't cheat at solitaire." If you acted on the best available information, honestly, things going wrong gives you nothing to regret. The process was sound.

Separate from regret is the wince-factor. Stevenson left Baupost Group when he became a single parent; the person who took over is on the Forbes list. He winces every time. But recognizes: if he'd stayed, he couldn't have done everything else. A wince is the price of a path, not a verdict on it.

Personal Board of Directors

Rather than seeking a single mentor (who rarely covers all of life), build a personal-board-of-directors — 6-7 people whose advice you value in specific domains. No one is mentioned in all categories by others who call them mentors. Mentoring is domain-specific.

Inflection Points as Gifts

Life has inflection points — moments where there is no clear tangent, no obvious direction: divorce, health crisis, a friend's death, giving up tenure. Most people pass through them without stopping. Treating them as gifts means asking: does this free me to change direction?

Key Lessons

  • Start at the end: what will be said about you when you die? Nobody publishes your balance sheet in your obituary.
  • We got to HBS by getting an A in every class. We won't get an A-plus in everything in life. Choose what to let go.
  • Everybody's outside looks better than my inside. You know your inside; you're seeing other people's outsides.
  • Everything about the future is a bet. Be explicit about the bets — three states of nature: won, lost, still don't know. Many people who've lost won't admit it.
  • Live life forward. You can learn from the past but you can't change it. See live-life-forward.
  • Plan for the ripple, not the splash. The most satisfying impacts are the ones you didn't plan — people who come back years later to say you helped them.
  • The culture question: am I in the right place? Some places are toxic. Some are good for others but bad for you. See match-quality.
  • Juice worth the squeeze: are you going in the direction you want, not just running hard because a gun went off?

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